


26 Kisses

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adventure, Boys Being Idiots, Contests, Cute, Fluff, Humor, Kissing, M/M, Mild Injury, Science Fiction, Sick Fic, Slow Burn, Smut, space odyssey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:50:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 63,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7424356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance lets slip a habit from his past and home or-<br/>A silly fluff drabble that turned into a space opera about boys falling in love; space plague, alien planets, and being stranded, Keith and Lance try to make it home </p><p> my <a href="http://insomniac-arrest.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleepless in Satellite

**Author's Note:**

> slight spoilers for episode six and Pidge
> 
> also! please tag me in your fanart on tumblr as @insomniac-arrest.tumblr.com, the art means a lot to me and I would love to see it! :D

The night clung to his shoulder tops like a rude little brother wanting a ride and yanking on his eyelids. Lance must have yawned five times before they even reached the castle doors.

“How about we tell the universe to take a break? Like, give us at least two days off.” Hunk expressed as he practically carried both Lance and Pidge through the entrance.

“Yeah,” Lance agreed as he hung off his arm, “ding-dong galaxy,” he yawns, “knock it off, we’ll be losing our hair soon from the stress, and we all know Keith would look awful bold, mullet better than nothing.” He glances at Keith who makes a face at him.

“Noted.” Shiro says with a sigh to his voice, “but since Voltron doesn't take rain-checks I suggest you all get some rest, we're back to the first ring tomorrow. I am going to go talk to Allura about finishing rescuing the Hazmets.”  
  
They nod in unison and Shiro leaves the ‘kids’ in the middle of the hall, drooping on each other as they feel the tug of exhaustion.

“Alright, I’m going to go get something to eat,” Hunk says as he turns to the goo room, “I collected some weird carrot-like things from the last planet, and I kind of want to see if they taste like carrots.”  
  
“I would give a 90% certainty that they do not.” Pidge readjusted her glasses, missed the rims and threaded her hand through her hair instead.  
  
“Maybe if I put them in a soup?” Hunk offered and Pidge shook her head in skepticism.

“Alright, have fun,” Lance detaches himself from the big man, he would never admit it, but every mission made his insides feel like decompressing jelly, looking at food didn’t help that.

“Whoa there,” Pidge steadies Lance as he wobbles, his side aching from an impact from a blaster on the last planet.

“I’m good, I’m good, good like Robin Hood in the royal bank.” Lance tries to reassure her and push the smaller paladin off.

“I’ll take him.” Keith speaks up and they glance at the moody boy.

“I don’t need to be babysat!” He sputters, his bottom lip sticking out, but Pidge was looking at Keith.

“K,” Pidge lets him go and they turn to wave at them.

“Be good buddy,” Hunk pats him on the back, and Keith swoops in to support his right side.

“Hey!” Lance glowers, “you’re tired too, don’t even act like a tough-drenched-cat with me.”  
  
Keith sighs again, heavily, with the weight of a metal cloud on his brow, “come on. You’re falling asleep on your feet.”  
  
Lance yawned in the middle of that sentence despite himself and doesn’t protest anymore as they stagger the rest of the hallways to the bedrooms.

“Is it this the one?” Lance was a little blurry, “all these hallways look the same to me, like some sort of spooky ghost-house, are there space ghosts?” He considers evil-twin aliens telling him to come play with them, play space-ball with him forever and ever.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Keith huffs and turns to a door with a light dent on the side.

“Oh yeah,” Lance remembers it’s his. "Man, I could sleep for ages."  
  
"Don't bet on it, Allura will make us do another emergency drill at 4."  
  
"Don't even tempt her!" Lance crows and slaps Keith's shoulder, "and get some rest, those bags under your eyes are going to become full-blown suitcases." 

Keith shakes his head, "Fine. But put some ice on your side..."

Lance shrugs and leans over Lance to get to the door, "I'm fine. Always fine."

“Goodnight Lance,” Keith mutters and cracks his neck.

"Yeah," he stretches, “night.” Keith smelled familiar and strangely of soap- sweaty soap that hinted at dusty mountains and weary bodies, Lance leaned in, rubbed at his eyes and kissed him on the cheek.

They both freeze and even a tired Lance-brain was awake enough to trill off warning sounds ‘error, error, this boy is not a mama or auntie or sister.’

“Uh,” Lance jerks backward and dances through the door on jerky knees, "right.”  
  
“Uh,” Keith was a little red, and Lance wants to take a cloth and rub it off his high-cheekbones.

“Woo! I love sleep walking.” Lance jumps into the room and waves, Keith waves weakly back. It wasn’t his best defense.

  
The door closes and Lance collapses against it and groans, they really did need a day off.


	2. Tactics

The next time wasn’t an accident. Keith knew that much at least.

It was warfare, modern warfare and Keith was more of a classics kind of guy.

“Come on, watch your footwork.” Keith snapped and lunged at Lance’s sides, thrusting him off balance and watches the other boy sputter and nearly keel over.

“Watch it!” He shouts and rights himself, “I said teach me less-talented-Keith-Urban, not try to impale me.”  
  
“Oh trust me, if I wanted to impale you already, you’d be impaled.” Keith huffs and Lance snorts at that and someone groans off to the side loans.

“Are you two really going to keep doing this?” Hunk yelled lighty, “some of us want to practice blasting stuff... pew, pew.” He took out his weapon out and pretended to shoot.  
  
“Yeah, and it’s kind of gross.” Pidge pitches in and Keith ignores them.

“Five more minutes boys.” Shiro inputs and Keith knows has to get Lance back into some sort of fighting state.

“Yeah! Teach me to fight good quicker man.” Keith frowns deeply at that sentence and watches Lance bounce from foot to foot.

“Just,” he sighs and turns to Lance head on, “try to fight like yourself, alright? It must have worked for you so far.” He grumbles and puts his sword up again, Lance raises his practice one.

“Oh, scared I’ll win if I get into my real groove?”  
  
Keith exhales sullenly and gets low, "Nevermind.”   
  
Lance makes the first move, blitzing forward on light feet, Keith is quicker and parry’s to the side and strikes at Lance’s shoulder with his shield, he almost topples.

 

“I said, watch your feet!” Lance turns and thrusts side sword up, Keith blocks it and jerks his wrist to the side to loosen his grip on the weapon, the practice sword clatters to the floor.

“It’s over.”  
  
“Shut up,” Lance growls and in the heat of a double turn as they struggle hand to hand he leans in and kisses Keith on the cheek.

Keith’s eyebrows shoot upward and someone off to the side starts to cough violently. This one was not the light sleepy brush but a purposeful missile-guided kiss, his heart beat in it's chest like train hurtling down the tracks. 

“Wha-”  


Keith’s sword is knocked out of his hands and someone wrestles him to the ground.

“Woooo! Someone say Lance is the bomb.”  
  
“Lance is an idiot.” Keith says through clenched teeth as he tries to throw him off.

“No way, you said fight like me and I totally did...You gotta accept defeat.”  
  
“You can’t kiss your enemies on the battlefield asshole!” Keith rolls off to the side and Lance keeps sitting on him. The training floor digs into his back and the sweat drips off his shoulder blades.

“I mean, maybe not the ugly ones, but there’s got to be evil space babes out there ready to be converted.” Keith can visualize the weird teeth shine that comes over the other boy when he speculates over his ‘moves.’

“Did you just call me a space ba-”

“Alright, enough you two.” Shiro intervened, “we’re all supposed to be getting better in here, time to get off the floor.”  
  
“How long do you think they’ll keep this up?” Pidge loud-whispered to Hunk who shrugs.

“Maybe if we lock them up somewhere?” They exchange ideas and Keith rolls his eyes and kicks Lance to finally get off of him.

Shiro shooed them off to go get cleaned up and Keith flips off Lance when they make to the hallway.

"You're still mad?" Lance had put his hands over his head casually.

“Was the first time a battle tactic too?” Keith ventures tensely as he follows him to the showers.

“Nah,” Lance shrugged, “but like, it’s your hair, okay? Make me think of my auntie Karen, she had a thing for mullets and demanded kisses on the cheek, every night.” Lance was grinning at the ceiling but Keith could see a stiffness to his shoulders.  
  
Keith folded his arms together, “keep your auntie in your own personal space then.” He tries to articulate.

Lance snorts, “okay. It was late, we can like, never mention it.” Keith shakes his head, and turns a corner to go to his room- he didn’t need a shower. “So prickly…”

  
Keith massages his cheek and practices with his sword in his room instead.


	3. Make 'em Laugh

Lance walked into what they had collectively dubbed ‘the living room’ and almost immediately walked back out again. They only had an hour of downtown before the next training session, and Lance just needed to figure out how to spend it- Keith was option number 'maybe not.' 

Keith was sitting with his arms crossed across his chest, eyes downcast and mouth practically curling up on itself as it pursed, genuinely pursed, like he’d eaten the world's worst lemon.

His dark hair was tied in knot in the nape of his neck and he looked compact and brooding, waves of ‘brood’ wafting off of him like axe out of a boys locker room.

Lance took a deep breath.

“What’s my main-man-red-paladin up to?” He does finger guns at him and shines his teeth in Keith’s direction.

Keith mutely glances back up at him and then back down at the floor, his brooding fumigating what must be the entire first floor.

Lance sighs and considers turning to head out again when Keith slumps down farther into his seat and is practically lying down on the couch with the air of a sad sack of potatoes.

Lance drums his fingers against his pants and bites the inside of his cheek. Could he really leave him there like that? Lance takes one more breath and then hops up and over the furniture and crashes into the other boy to roll him onto his side and sit on his shoulder.

“Lance!” Keith finally gives him the time of day, “what the fuck?” He flares-up at him and Lance rearranges himself so he’s very comfortably perched on top.

“Why did the bicycle fall over?” Lance asks in delight as he leverages some of his height over the shorter boy and pins him down.

“Lance I’m serious…” Keith says threateningly but Lance just whistles.

“Because it’s two-tired!” He shines his best grin and at least expects a pity-chuckle.

“You are a disaster, which of your two brain cells malfunctioned?” Lance adjusts himself as he pins down Keith’s shoulders.

“Two-tired! It has two wheels man. And is tired- so it falls over.”  
  
“Don’t explain your jokes,” Keith says grimly and then tries to flip Lance over, “and get off!”

“Two-tir-oomph.” Keith tries to get up, but Lance latches on to him and drags them both to the floor.

“You are, this is, ridiculous,” he murmurs and then tries to elbow Lance in the gut and pull on his hair, but Lance is ready and catches his little wrist.

“Oh-ho-ho, you might be king of piloting or whatever, but I have two older brothers and sisters.” He grabs Keith’s hands and twists them behind his back on the floor, “you aren’t winning floor wrastlin'!” He turns him over again to pin his arms to his side and continue to sit on top of him.

“What do you want?” He growls in what seemed to be defeat, Lance almost purrs.

“Laugh, why don’t you? Here I have more: Can a kangaroo jump higher than a house?”  
  
“No.” Keith groans.

“Correct, a house can’t jump at all.” He laughs and wipes at his eye.  
  
“I hate you.”  
  
Lance leans down on him, “no you don’t.”  
  
Keith sighs, “give me something actually good, maybe I’ll laugh.”

“Coran’s cooking is so bad we end up praying _after_ the meal.” Keith chuckles very lightly, like a barely-there whisper, and Lance is tempted to clap his hands together or pump his fist in the air.

“How many Voltrons does it take to change a light bulb?”  
  
“Oh my God,” Keith was fidgeting under him, making Lance a little more hyper-aware of his lean sides and low-hanging neckline revealing miles of jumbled collarbone and skin, skin, skin.

“Well, five paladins, but first you have to wait ten minutes for it to transform.”

“I’m not laughing,” Keith’s eyes were red around the edges and Lance is running out of strategy maneuvers.

“You tell me a joke then hot-shot.” Lance says with a terse frown.

“I would hold up a mirror, but first I’d have to be able to _move_ ,” Keith wiggled his arms and Lance laughed to himself.

“Jokes on you, I look great in mirrors.”  
  
Keith snorted and leaned up, “okay, I have a joke that you told me.”  
  
Lance lights up and sits up straighter, “let’s hear it, I’m known to be pretty damn funny.”

“Lean closer.”

Lance steadies himself on Keith’s torso, preparing himself for a fake-out or classic wet-willy. He watches Keith’s hands carefully.

He finds his cheeks light-up like the 4th of July as a pair of lips press against them. Lance’s insides do a jelly-roll (a roll in mid-air while turning to jelly).

“Hey!” He smacks his own cheek where Keith had kissed it, Keith was laughing.

“Revenge,” he says flatly and then rolls over, Lance loses his balances and topples over to hit the hard metal floor and Keith continues to make a noise that he would only describe as ‘giggling.’

“Not funny,” Lance fumes and tries to roll back to a sitting position, Keith intercepts and pins him his back to the couch.

“Oh no you don’t.”  
  
“What?” Lance goes slack, “you want more jokes?”  
  
“No.” Keith mulls something over while Lance plans his next move: something to do with a groin kick and maybe a hug-tackle. And maybe more face-kissing, but that thought got repressed right back down to the bottom of his boots.

“Tell me a secret.” Keith’s eyes blink like owl lamps at a dollar store, Lance bites his own lip.  
  
“Pidge is a girl.” He responds dead-pan.  
  
“You were the only dumbass who was really surprised by that.”  
  
Lance grumbles and feels Keith’s bony ass dig into him- and says as much. “Luke Skywalker is my favorite hero.”  
  
“That’s not a se- wait, why?” Keith poked his side, “tell me that’s not why you became a pilot.” Keith was examining him with dark, active eyes and Lance has to not look him in the face.

“What? No, a little, I just like my heroes with swords, and evil alien fathers, and the look of someone who's ready to figure skate at any given moment.” Lance frowns at Keith's blank face, “tell me you at least like Star Wars dude.”

Keith shrugs, while shifting his weight to Lance’s shoulder, “Star Wars is fine.”  
  
“Fine??” Lance exaggerates the word, it was almost a whine, “nuh-uh, no way, best films of all time!”

“Even the prequels?”  
  
“Great. All great. No one likes sand, they’re relatable.”  
  
Keith was snickering again and Lance makes a fuss and they continue their argument of quality of media until Lance has to break out his yoda-impression and Keith starts actually really laughing.

“Rewatch you must.” Lance says irritably.

“Stop, Stop,” Keith was holding his side, “you sound like a frog trying to swallow helium while choking.”  
  
“Nay, talk I must like the great green jedi.”  
  
“No, no,” Lance wasn’t sure how to properly process Keith’s smiling face and it sort of short-circuited into a loop of ‘whoa’ and ‘wow.’

“Boys!” Someone calls and they both freeze, Keith scrambles off of Lance’s lap.

Lance stretches and bounces on the balls of his feet and tries to place his odd feeling of disappointment in being interrupted, “Hey! Someone come defend star wars with me.”

“Star wars is awesome,” Hunk confirms from the hallway and Lance fist bumps him.

“Exactly!” He strides to the door, “also, I taught Keith how to laugh, that has to be like 5 Voltron points.”  
  
“Voltron points?” Pidge raises her eyebrow at him as he joins them in their group huddling in the hall.

  
“I laugh all the time dammit, and this time was only because Lance is an idiot,” Keith joined them, looking red in the face and out of breath.

“Don’t lie! I totally turned your pity-party into a blow-out.” Lance says as he high-fives himself and ignores everyone's eye-rolling.

“I want Voltron points…” Hunk says thoughtfully and they turn to go to the training room.

Lance glances at Keith as Shiro joins them, and Keith retells them about how dumb Lance apparently was, but he’s smiling, so it’s basically worth it.

Keith eventually turns to him as they make it to the invisible maze training, “thanks.” Keith huffs and Lance kicks him in the shin affectionately in return.

“Any time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 3  
> hey, so it looks like I thought of a real life plot for this oneshot, which is weird, but it's a thing; I am hesitant to turn what was a drabble into a real multi-chapter story since I'm worried it will flow weird, but I am compelled...
> 
> anyway, hope you liked the chapter! Comments, kudos and bookmarks always appreciated


	4. The Game is On.

Keith limbs were light, and his ears were still ringing from the Voltron clash with the Galra from a few hours back. The firefight was still rattling his bones and he was glad for once to be standing on the ground.

He and the rest of the paladins stood in a ring of rocks, like a fairy-circle, with the people of Gea presenting something to them.

He could feel his lips tug up as he watched Allura interact with the Hazmets, giving them a communicator to reach to report to if the Galra ever returned.

“The Alteans and the Hazmets may resume our friendship,” the matriarch of the Hazmets placed a flower in the hands of Allura, “please accept these gifts in thanks.”  
  
The Hazmets were lumpy asymmetric people with long arms and stump like legs. They had skin like tree-bark or rugged terrain, their most redeeming quality was an array of plant life that sprung from a moss that grew over their bodies. Elaborate decorations of vines and flowers strung across their bodies and made them appear like walking botanical gardens.

  
“Look,” Pidge said as she examined the aliens with her wrist computer, “that moss is symbiotic with them, it absorbs pathogens and in return gets a place to live.” Pidge comments as she looks into their readings.

Keith grunts in response and Hunk bent down to look at the flora on the ground.

“Nice,” Lance says with open eyes, a loopy smile on his sharp features as one of the Hazmets bestowed a blue-wavy flower into his hands.

Hunk’s face curved into a ‘O’ as he received a yellow-daisy and Keith feels his face heating up as he accepts a flame-red flower that smelled like charcoal and wet dog.

He wrinkles his nose at the sharp scent but bows his head to the creatures, “thank you.”  
  
“No. Thank you,” the Hazmet grinned, “we haven’t been free of the Galra since our oldest friends fell.” The Alteans.

Allura looked at all of them an unknowable dimness to her eyes, Keith glances at Shiro, urging him quietly to tell her that guilt was not very useful.

“We are more than happy to free the people of these galaxies.” Keith watched Allura clutch the flower closer to her chest. “Zarkon will not stand in our way.” She raised herself to her full height, “the universe will know peace, and Voltron will stop the Empire.”  
  
There was a surprising amount of cheering and Keith finds himself nodding, and then glancing at Lance whose eyes were wide and crinkling at the edges, sparkling, he mouths 'yeah, hell yes Allura,' and Keith smiles to himself at the ground.

“Alright,” Shiro shepherds them together, “we appreciate the hospitality, but we have to be in the next nebula by tomorrow.”

The Hazmets bestow more strange smelling scents on them in various perfumes and Keith knows he’s going to smell like a border collie who just swam in a distilled-pond for a few days.

They wearily traipse back to the castle and Keith glances at Lance’s back as the muscles in his back flex where he stretches.

“I am going to sleep for 24 hours.” He announces and reaches towards the sky.

“What?” Keith asks dryly, “no flirting with the Hazmets girls?” The other’s eyes wonder to them.

“Their tree people man,” Lance’s face is earnest as his palms face the ceiling, “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Shay is rock-person.” Hunk contributes with a finger in the air. "She's not bad."

“I am not hitting on a tree.” Lance returns as they make their way through the long corridors.

“Lance only cares about them having space tiddies.” Pidge says in a loud-whisper and a smirk. Hunk snickers but Shiro frowns back the exchange.

“ _Pidge_.” Shiro says warningly.

“Oh come on,” Pidge says, pushing up her glasses, “ _space tiddies_.”  
  
Keith was snickering now too, Shiro was sighing in exasperation.

“You guys don’t give me a lot of credit, I can hit on all sorts of people, but who knows what kind of allergies will spring up if I kiss that moss-stuff.” Keith’s ears perk up at the word ‘people’ instead of 'females,' Lance scratched the back of his neck and raises his flower, “and not smelling like earwax.”

"Hmm, earwax?" Pidge glances at him, "mine is like a hardwood store."

"What's everyone elses?" Hunk examines the plants.

“Mine's like something burning.” Keith says thoughtfully as he looks at the charcoal-flower.

“Whoa, lemme smell.” Lance leans over him and exchanges flowers with the group, Keith’s fingers brush Lance's wrist and he chastises his rabbit-fast heart beat that follows.

“Pidge, this smells like my aunties compost pile,” Lance complained and Pidge shrugs as they stand outside their rooms.

"I think these are like the moss. Maybe they can pick up on the air and change scents?" 

Lance shakes his head, "flowers are flowers." Lance almost inhales all of Hunk's daisy and Shiro seems to disappear as he departs in the direction of Allura's room.

“I am going to go shower,” Hunk waves them goodbye next and Pidge goes to go mess hall to perfect a new radio that would pick up human signatures.

Keith lingers in the hallway, he twirls Lance’s flower between his finger tips as Lance inspected his own gift with a murmur of ‘why is yours cooler than mine?’

“Some night.” Keith finally says as he glances up at the ceiling and tries not to sound like a robot attempting human demeanor. Lance was eyeing him, so he might have failed.

“Yeah, team Voltron, alliance two planets, and Zarkon alliance with everyone else.”  
  
“But not the earth earth.” Keith adds factually and Lance flinches every so slightly.

“Yeah...Hasn't got there.” Lance states in a low voice while his eyes drag down to the floor and Keith feels his stomach settle with stones, reminding himself to not bring the earth up. Lance shrugs, “would be better if _we_ could visit though."

Keith shakes his head and feels he could say something here, but doesn’t.

"We can just concentrate...on the mission." Keith puts his hands in his pockets and squares his shoulders.

“Yeah. You better watch out then,” Lance lights up again and shoots a finger gun at him with a wink, “because next time I’m going to get more kills than you.”  
  
Keith shakes his head, “you are a leg, and,” he blinks flatly, “I have a sword.”

“Still!” Lance pumps his hand in the hair, “gonna do it. Kick them into the next nebula.” Lance karate-chops the air,  Keith sprouts a side-ways smile.

“Think of a better game, God, jenga maybe.”

Lance snorts and rubs his chin, “oh I have plenty of games, better ones than jenga, or food-goo Olympics, or weird-cheek kissing wrestling.”

Keith raises an eyebrow at the mention of their cheek-kisses which neither seemed to mention.

Keith leans on his door and a thought crosses his mind like a lightening bolt that begged to be followed.

"Games huh." He leans with a wicked glint and his breath catches in his throat, he moves anyway- what could he lose? He kisses Lance on the cheek. Lance freezes and Keith felt oddly satisfied at the look of shock. “Point for team Red.” He says wryly and Lance’s mouth was hanging open.

Keith turns to get into his bed bunk and maybe suffocate his face in a pillow and murmur curse words at himself.

“No fair!” Lance seemed to snap out of it and called after him, “I wasn’t ready, get back here, I can get points too.” Keith dodges Lance’s outreached hands, and slips into his room.

Lance bangs his fist on his door and Keith’s heart is racing, he laughs to himself a little and glances down, he’s still holding Lance’s flower. He puts it on the bedside table- he'd return it tomorrow. 

  
He falls to the distant sound of the castle creaking and the violent coughing of one of the other paladins, Keith's pulse still has a little skip to it as he drifts off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 4


	5. Bad Flirting

“I told you Hunk, it’s not flirting.” Lance asserts as he reaches for the shaving cream.

Hunk brushed his teeth and raises an eyebrow at Lance, “okay, alright, I hear you. But consider this: it seems like flirting.”

Lance snorts in indignation, “cheek-kisses don’t count.” His cheeks were hot. “Total no homo zone.”

“Uhhhhhhhh,” Hunk’s eyebrows were raised almost into his hairline, toothpaste hanging uselessly off his toothbrush.

“I’m serious!” Lance rubs the shaving cream in unevenly.

“A contest to surprise someone with a kiss, is uh, well frankly I had to leave the room the other day from exposure.” Hunk asserts as he scrubs his front teeth.

“Well,” Lance searches the air for something, “It’s a contest.” Lance angles his razor and starts to edge out the thick foam.

“Do you even have stubble?” Hunk questions him.

“I have enough!” Lance finishes his first swipe, “the ladies love a clean face.”

 

“Or Keith…” Hunk says through a cough.

“What was that?”

 

“Nothing.” Hunk continues to brush his teeth and spit into the space-sink, “just saying, bad flirting, ruins my breakfast.”

“Oh come on, we’re not even doing it that much."

Hunk shakes his head and pats him on the back, “Voltron is gonna get weird if our arm and our leg start doing this.” Hunk tilts his head, “do you think Shiro will promote me to arm?”

 

Lance waves around his razor in the air, “it’s not like that.”  

Hunk chuckles and washes his mouth out, Lance concentrates on not cutting himself as he presses the razor blade to his chin and sensitive neck.

“Good morning.” A flat voice greets him and Lance jumps.

He turns around quickly, “Wait, wait, this is vulnerable territory-”

“Muh,” Keith gets him on the cheek and Lance curses.

“Quiznaks, still not fair.”

 

“Oh come on,” Hunk moaned next to them. “Gross.”

“What?” Lance swats at Keith and he easily dodges.

Hunk whips his toothbrush around and splatters them with Altean-mint toothpaste, “Danger Will Robinson, bad flirting isn’t good for Hunk’s health.”

 

“It’s not flirting.” They say in unison and then glance at one another.

Lance goes in for the win, but Keith is already out the door and Lance’s face is still only half-shaved.

Lance bares his teeth and finishes quickly, leaving Hunk sighing in the small bathroom.

Team awkward: 2 points

\-------------------

Lance crouched around the corner of the kitchen, keeping himself low and loose, eyes narrowed. Target was unsuspectingly eating goo-cereal with the face of a bored news-anchor, the day was young.

Lance takes a deep breath, “sneak attack!” He cries and Keith turns around in a jolt of flopping-mullet hair and a scowl.

“It’s not a sneak attack if you yell it.”

“Ahah,” Lance congratulates his quick reflexes as he swoops in gets his lips pressed sloppily high onto the other boys cheek bone. Keith’s mouth hangs open and his face folds into a dark storm cloud.

Two voices groan in unison next to them.

“I swear to Allura’s fake-crown,” Pidge looked ready to fling food at them, “if you two,” Pidge pauses to sniffle and blow her nose, “ugh, one moment.” She hacks a cough and Lance pats her on the back.

“See?” Hunk says as he sympathetically passes her a tissue, “you’re making Pidge sick.”

“She was like that when I got here.” Keith said back, matter of fact as ever.

 

“Team Blue has 2 points now,” Lance hisses at Keith as he ignores Hunk.

“The first time didn’t count, you kissed me on the back of the head, doesn’t count, team stupid only has one point…” Keith crossed his arms and Lance growled.

“Well team... also stupid has bad hair and, erg, pouty lips! For pouting!”

“Ooh, nice.” Hunk gives him a thumbs up and grins at him while Keith buries his face in his hands and shakes his head. Pidge erupts into another violent coughing session

Lance turns to her, “Do you want to go into the med pod?” He inspects her eyes and she sticks her tongue out, “you’ll feel better after that.”

 

“I heard Shiro coughing last night too.” Keith says as Lance side-eyes him to make sure he’s not planning a counter-attack.

Pidge shakes her head, “it’s surprising that we haven’t got more sick, this is space and weird planets should expose us to all new types of pathogens.” She sniffles and Hunk scoots a little farther away from her. “It was inevitable.”

“Uh, I am feeling a tickle too.” Hunk feels his throat and his eyes go wide.

 

“Right you are Pidge.” Coran appears in the doorway and Lance jumps at his sudden appearance.

“Which part?” Pidge blinks and wipes her watery red eyes.

“Technically humans should die from sudden exposure to viruses from foreign objects!”

“Good to hear.” Keith says dryly and Lance bites his lip.

“But, lucky for you, the castle actually inoculated new arrivals to any harmful known illnesses.” He says with a finger in the air, Lance pours himself a bowl of goo to keep his mind off space plague.

“Well it sucks at it’s job,” Keith inspects Pidge, “I hear Pidge hacking up a storm all night last night.”

“Well, this is probably a new virus, Allura and I will have to look into it.” Coran says as he strokes his mustache and Hunk starts to feel his own forehead.

“Inevitable?” Hunk glances at Pidge, “you know I am warm, do you think it’s contagious?”

“Probably.” Pidge says and Coran nods absently.

“Well, I feel fine, we should get in some training before we go through the next wormhole.” Lance says before nibbling on his goo and scooting away from the other two. He spent enough time in the med pods as it was.

“Good suggestion my boy, if you feel fine than either rest or start training. We have more work to do.”

 

Keith nods at Coran, “where are we headed next?”

“Planet Zanzabar.” Coran explains and twirls his facial hair, “or ‘pitstop’ as it is called in most languages. It’s a trading post but also a free planet! We are stopping to see if they will align with us.”

 

“Sounds important.” Keith says as the other boy looks at the ceiling.

 

“It is! Such a new thing to, back when I was rip and fighting we didn’t have whole planets for stopping, and…” Coran launches into a expletive and Lance drifts off.

He scoops goo into his mouth and hands Pidge another tissue as she sneezes her lungs up.

He keeps the tab open his mind-

Team Blue-dragon-cat-viper: One point

\----------------------

Lance was in the hallway the next time. He was taking Hunk to see Allura for her to run some new tests, Keith was there, but he was leaning on a doorframe a few paces away.

“Hey, look who let the sour-cat out.” Lance points at him and Keith raises his eyebrows.

“Better watch out…” Hunk warns.

Keith moves like liquid silly-putty and crushes Lance’s cheek to his mouth before he can mumble a ‘yeah right.’

“Ack!” Another kiss, another hot-face and burning-coals twisting in his gut, Keith is gone before he knows it, “Don’t think this is over!” He raises his fist in the air and shakes it.

Hunk talks about losing his lunch and walked himself the rest of the way to Allura’s room.

Team too-fast: two points

\----------

Keith was in the training room doing pullups. Why? Probably because he’s a douche, Lance thinks to himself as examines the sweating overachiever.

“Hey, fingerless gloves,” Lance leaned in the doorway as Keith glanced at him. “Any good  rogue missions lately?”

 

“Lance,” Keith says warningly, “this is my personal time.” He was still holding onto the bar but his muscles were tensed, reading Lance’s intentions to get him.

“Me time, blah, blah, most people’s me time is with good TV and maybe a nice long shower you know.” He bumped his eyebrows up and down and Keith rolled his eyes. Lance glided towards him in a couple strides.

“I lived in the desert. TV wasn’t exactly an option.” Keith asserts and Lance blinked and pauses in his movement.

 

“Man, you really were a hermit, not even Walk This Way? Or Talk To the Hand, Baby? Those are classics!” Lance raised arms above his head.

“I am not sure if you’re grasping the concept of ‘not exactly available in my time zone’.”

Lance shrugged, “Oh you missed out, Walk This Way is like the reality modeling show for like, space gear and wearable tech, and oh God, dog suits. They had this whole episode for suits for dogs.” He bounced on the balls of his feet.

Keith glanced backwards at him, fingers untensing, “you watched modeling shows?”

 

“Uh,” Lance’s face goes blank, “my sister.” He mumbled, “Melody. She was super into them.” His mood somewhat sagged at the edges and he looked anywhere by at the Korean boy. He perks up when Keith lands back on the ground again and looks at him curiously. “But it was an awesome show, they had challenges every week, oh man this one week, they had a gala for Mars and-” Lance stops himself, “not that you want to hear it.”

 

Keith doesn’t look at him but starts putting his arms across his body to stretch. “No. It’s fine. Go on.”

 

Lance wasn’t expecting that, he rubs the back of his neck. “We shouldn’t think about home too much.”

Keith frowns but nods slowly, he walks up to Lance and tentatively places a hand on his shoulder: “Lance.” He says evenly.

Lance feels jitters and it’s all too close, blitzing towards Keith’s unguarded face. “Haha!” He triumphantly pecks him on the cheek.

“Bastard!” Keith jumps in surprise and Lance dances.

He starts moon walking out the door, “team ice-ice baby in the lead.”

 

“Not even! We were bonding you ass.”

“Oh I bonded alright. With victory.” He shoots him a wave and closes the door.

Lance’s takes a few steadying breaths in the hall and listened to Keith’s angry grunts from his next work-out routine.

Team hermit: 2

Team loud-and-out: 2

\---------------------

Lance was standing in his pajamas and choosing the right song to try to sleep to: something like ocean noises made him nostalgic and bird songs were obnoxious past 11 pm.

He sighs and rubs some of the drowsiness out of his vision, sure, he could sleep, but not often enough to make it worth it.

A tempered knock comes to the door. Lance sits bolt upright in bed.

“Allura?” He purrs, brain going sideways and upward, “how coy of you.”

 

No one answers following his greeting so he rips the blankets off and traipses to the door, a fourth knock comes with a metallic clang.

“Hello,” He opens it with a smirk and waits for the effect.

Keith stands there, straight as a board and still in full-gear, Lance deflates, “awe, you aren’t a space princess.”

 

“I’ll be sure to wear my ball gown and crown next time.” Keith says off-handedly, and Lance snickers.

“Okay, I could pay to see that.” Keith shakes his head and Lance leans back on the side of the door. “So what’s up?”

Keith appeared grim, “speaking of the princess, she has got it too.”

 

“Got what?” Lance raises an eyebrow.

“The Walking Sickness, that’s what they’re calling it. Allura got it now, they’re not too worried yet, but…” Keith frowned at the floor, hands bawled up by his sides.

 

“We have to go see her.” Lance scrambles to get out the door but Keith put his hand up and stops him.

“We aren’t sick, so they said it’s a quarantine.”

 

Lance wrinkles his nose, “for real?”

Keith nods shortly, “Shiro said we’d deal with it in the morning...I just wanted to.” He straightens up, his dark eyes darting down, “anyway, get some rest.”

 

“Wait, wait,” Lance puts his hands up.

“Huh?” Keith meets his eye and Lance leans in.

“Go team blue.” He sneaks in a cheek-kiss and he watches Keith almost fall over reels back on his heels.

“Is this,” he sputters, “really the time?”

 

Lance shrugs, “can’t do much about space-colds. But I can still get that in.”

 

Keith huffs and grabs Lance’s shoulders, “Look, Lance, this is real. Shiro is sick too," Keith fumbles, "he could barely stand when I was in there."

 

Lance’s eyes soften, “Oh,” he breathes thinking about Keith and Shiro’s relationship, “I’m sorry man.”

Keith’s movements were surprisingly slow but his eyes were alert and focused, they hover inches from Lance’s and Lance feels his pulse race into his throat.

“Uh,” Keith reaches up and gets in another kiss on the cheek, and whispers a victory chant in his ear before returning stony-faced.

“Fuck.” Lance says gently, softly, maybe for himself, maybe for Keith.

“I’ll see you in the morning... Don’t do something stupid.” Keith waves.

 

Lance nods mutely, without throwing a fit over the unfairness of causing a distraction before striking. But he can’t.

He closes the door and melts down it to the floor, Keith had gotten him right on the side of his mouth, off center but still feather light on the cusp of his lips.

Lance doubts this is how the ‘no-homo-zono’ was supposed to feel. His stomach tightens and does an impression of a snake trying to wiggle out of its skin, maybe he was getting sick as well- but he doubts it.

Red team: 4

Blue team: 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 9


	6. Brush Your Hair and Watch Your Head

Keith readjusted his plastic gloves over his fingertips, made sure his mask was tightly strapped across his face, he walks into ‘the throne room’ as it was nicknamed by Lance several weeks ago.

Though the throne room was reduced to basically a sick bay at that point: tissues strewn over the small steps, blankets and nests of pillows littered the floor, and an unhappy chorus of sniffling filled the air.

Keith tried not to wrinkle his nose at the distinctive scent of illness: sour and yellow to his senses.

“How are we feeling?” Keith addressed Hunk, the nearest patient.

Hunk gloomily wrapped the blanket tighter around his frame, “this is the worse than the time I accidentally married that mermaid alien since she gave me--”

“Dude I told you not to accept her gross ball of seaweed!” Lance interjects from over in the corner with Pidge.

“It was the polite thing to do!” Hunk hoarsely called back across the room.

“It felt like snot.” Lance argued and Keith gave out a tiny sigh.

“Yeah, whatever, you hit on her at least twelve times and she never offered you the snot-seaweed-marriage proposal.” Hunk retorted and then turned back to Keith, “anyway, remember when she tried to eat me later?”

“Uh yeah?” Keith scratched the back of his neck.

“Well, this is worse than that! And that was in the top ten worst days of Hunk life.” He broke into a coughing fit and Keith patted him on the back.

He hands Hunk a tissue who blows into it violently, Keith turns away. “How about you Pidge?”

“Feel like shit.” She says bluntly with no flowery story.

“And look at her hair!” Lance explicated and was poised behind Pidge with a brush in his hand and a delicate touch, “you think you were sick with 'rat's nest'.”

Lance was about detangling the mass on Pidge’s head and Keith was raising an eyebrow at him as Lance used his gloved hands to slowly undo the mess.

“It’s really fine Lance.” She sniffles, “this happens regularly.”

“I know, and you are an entire ‘yikes’ machine onto yourself. My sister was 5 and takes better care of her hair than you. And she’s five!”

Pidge shook her head, “taxes, death and haircare are overrated.”

Keith snickers into his hand and lets them bicker and for Lance to cluck over Pidge like a poorly-equipped older brother.

Keith turns to Coran who was acting as a live-in nurse, handing ever-disturbingly tasting portions of soup out to the sick.

“Coran, it’s been two weeks,” Keith says evenly as he approaches him, “what is this?”

Coran nods, “a right fifth equinox is what, can’t anything done everyone refusing this old-fashioned Altean cure all.”

“It tastes like sour milk!” Someone defends and Coran brushes them off.

Keith frown deepens, “you’re not telling us something.” He observes and Coran eyes become sharp and unapproachable.

His lips purse and he pats Keith on the back and points to the corner of the room.

Keith turns and finds where Coran wanted him to go. Shiro was sitting on the floor with a washcloth over his forehead, talking softly to Allura.

Keith approaches cautiously, trying not to interrupt them in their private session of hushed whispers and bent over bodies.

Keith clears his throat, they turn to him in sink, Allura herself showed no signs of being sick except for an off-color pallor to her skin and a certain dullness to her blue eyes. Keith nods at them and his eyes meet Shiro’s, a sentiment passes between them, Shiro seeming to try to reassure him.

“This illness...” Keith ventures lowly, with apprehension dripping from his words. Allura glances at Shiro and then back to the irritable Keith, he narrows his eyes. “I’ll say it again: you’re not telling us something.”

Allura sighs like she’s gulping down water.

“Keith,” Shiro says warningly, he tries to get up, falters, and Allura has to catch him before he collapses to the floor. Keith reaches out to support him, his pulse blaring in his wrists as his blood pressure spikes, Shiro couldn’t get like this- not him.

“This thing has been going on for too long.” Keith announces and balls up his fist, “tell me, now, or... I walk.” He’d heal Shiro himself if he had to.

“Aren’t you always walking off by yourself?” Lance murmurs from behind him and Keith ignores him.

Shiro’s eyes narrow towards him, “Keith, I know you’re upset, we’re all upset, but nothing is going to get down with threats.” Shiro takes a moment to cough into his hand, “I... saw something like this on the Galra prisons, I remember that much. They,” Shiro bit his lip and didn’t meet Keith’s gaze, “got better. Most of them.”

Keith shook his head, eyes never leaving Allura.

“Keith is right.” She finally says, her voice still strong and commanding, “I didn’t want to scare you, but I think we might have to start planning for something more.”

All the paladins eyes were on her now, and Keith felt himself holding his breath.

“Everyone, gather round, me and Shiro have been working on Team Voltron’s next move.” Allura says, trying to sound peppy. The rest of the team huddle closer to Allura’s stance and wait on her next words.

“Are we team Voltron? I was thinking we could maybe be like, Lion-Masters or Team Conquest. Inspire some fear in our enemy's.” Lance says and punches the air in front of him.

“I was thinking ‘get in the damn robot Shinji.’ You know,” Pidge wipes off her glasses, “an earth classic.”

Lance lights up with the look of someone about to talk about anime: somewhat frightening and gleeful.

Keith tugs on his sleeve to get his attention and nods towards Allura, Lance closes his mouth for once.

“This isn’t a normal illness is it?” Hunk says lowly, voicing what they had all been thinking.

Allura shakes her head, “it’s Altnean name is ‘Fisks,’ though it’s most commonly called ‘The Walking Disease,’ ‘White Cough’ or…” Allura paused, glanced at the ground and then jutted out her jaw and looked up again, “Coffin Builder.”

Keith hears Lance let out a short squeak, and Hunk puts his hands to his mouth and makes his patented face-of-worry.

“Coffin? Like coffin, _coffin_ , the kind you go to die in?” Hunk look suddenly much paler, “I’m too young to die, and I would like very much to not do that.”

Coran moved swiftly to the Princess's side and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“But that’s just Altneans being dramatic right?” Lance approached her, “I mean you guys build flashy flying lions, then…” Lance seemed to be drooping, “it’s just you being dramatic?”

Allura turned her back slightly and Coran faced all of them.

“Altneans were a great, noble people,” Coran begins, “and it took a bit more than Zarkon warships to wipe us out.” He announced in a clear voice, somehow sounding boastful despite the implications.

Shiro stands up again and teeters over to them, “biological warfare.”

“The Galra.” Keith feels himself saying with a sinking feeling in his gut, a darkness tugging at his consciousness. "They did this. They must have known."  
  
Allura nods, "known where we were headed." A hush grabs the room as they process the creeping feeling that Zarkon was predicting their moves ahead of them.

“But no worries! There is a cure.” Coran pipes up brightly, “or at least, there should be one, we found one before the blasted thing took out the capital.”

Allura takes a deep breath in, getting their attention, “even then, it probably shouldn’t kill humans. None of you are in the second phase yet, so, the medical pods may help.” She says clearly and Keith can feel Lance trembling next to him.

“But you’ve been exposed to it too...and you don’t know that for certain.” Lance says in something close to horror, “we can just, we have to.”

Pidge held onto Lance’s elbow and Hunk frowns at him sympathetically, Keith just narrows his eyes.

“It’s fine, I haven’t reached the second stage either.” She smiles, and claps her hands together, “We are the defenders of the galaxy! I promise, we won’t be down and out.”

Shiro nods at Allura and Keith eyes the rest of the team. “What can we do?” He asks Allura clearly.

“Ah, that’s part of our plan!” Coran asserts with jab of a finger into the air.

“Plan? Plan sounds good, I can get behind a plan.” Hunk says as he wipes his brow, “hopefully one including me not dying and living a nice long life, where I sometimes save the galaxy and get to see Shay.”

Allura brings their attention back to her, “first of all, the three of you will go into the medical-pods and will wait out the worst of the illness.”

“It hasn’t reached it’s worst yet?” Hunk groaned.

“We’ll join you,” Coran says forcefully, keeping his eyes on Allura- Keith catches that this was something they had been arguing about.

“Yes.” Allura says through gritted teeth, “I suppose we'll see if the cure we have on board will work...even if the disease mutated.”

Lance whimpers, “what can we do?” His hand was gripping onto Keith’s jacket, pulling him subconsciously in his direction.

“Ah, that is the next step.” Coran points to the window in the bay. “We’ll need a backup.”

“Yes,” Allura’s face softens into a smile, “there should be antibiotics for this on Zanzabar, it’s known to be a trading hub, so it should have what we’re looking for.”

“And what will it look like?” Keith ventures thoughtfully.

Allura sighs, “we’re not quite sure, but you can ask around.”

“Will they speak English?” Pidge asks skeptically.

Allura chuckles, “no. The Castle of Lions is a universal translator! How else would you understand us?”

“It is?” Pidge’s eyes go large, “that explains so much, how come you didn’t tell me this sooner? I could make a hand-held one and see what Lance is saying in his sleep.”

“Hey!” Lance glares at her.

“Besides ‘Keiiith’,’” Hunk loud-whispers and snickers behind his hand to Pidge, who also acts like a fifth grader on a field trip. Keith chooses to ignore it.

“Okay, go to the planet, ask for a cure for ‘Fisks’ and then get out.” Keith says, wrapping his around his new task. “I can do that.”

“Correct. You and Lance will have to be careful, a Galra ship is still in the Zanzabar airspace right now, but it’s a very crowded place, so you should be fine.”

Keith glances at Lance, “I can do it on my own. Lance should stay, he could still get sick.”

“And you couldn’t?” Lance glares him, “don’t go all lone-wolf jerk on me, I will get my anti-asshole spray out, don’t think I won’t.”

Keith could have bit him, “this is a serious mission, I can’t have you flirting with every thing in two legs while I save our necks.”

“I can be serious too you little-fingerless gloves, little shit-”

“Okay, okay,” Pidge flicks Lance in the ear, “you both need to cool it. All this testosterone in the air is going to ruin my mood.”

Allura nods at Pidge, “you shouldn’t go alone Keith. Nor should Lance, if all goes well, it shouldn’t be a long mission.”

 

“While you’re in the med pods?”

“Correct.” Allura starts walking towards the door, “you can take one of the space-crafts to the surface.”

Keith sighs, they wouldn’t be taking the lions.

“Ooh, ooh, I call piloting.” Lance says frantically.

“No way,” Keith says forcefully and turns away, “I pilot. We leave in ten, or I leave without you.” Lance flips him off.

Keith walks towards the door and hears Lance addressing Pidge, “alright, we have ten minutes to turn you into less of a disaster before I go with Mr. Grumpy to get some medicine, and maybe get him spaid.”

“There are so many questionable things in that sentence…” Keith lets their voices fade away and takes a deep breath in through the nose as he reaches the hallway.

Shiro approaches him and he can feel the other man’s presence squaring itself behind him. Shiro whispers a few words of encouragement to his back and Keith nods.

“It’s just another mission.” Keith says and Shiro pats him on the shoulder.

“Don’t rip Lance apart in the meantime.”

Keith shrugs, “no promises.”

He chuckles and gives Keith a hug, a tight one that bent his ribcage in and surrounded his body like a protective shell. Keith feels loose and skittish in his grip and doesn’t let go for somewhere in the range of ‘too long.’

He huffs briefly, breathing in the scent of something familiar and woody. When they let go and Shiro leads him the rest of the way to the ship Hunk and Coran had flown to the Balmera.

“If you die while I’m gone, I’ll kill you.” Keith says lightly and rubs the back of his neck, Shiro chuckles and opens the cargo door for him.

“I don’t plan on it.”

They share another silent dialogue before a voice carries across the hanger.

“Damn, don’t get in yet! I have a handful of Pidge’s hair and at least two-bottles of goo for the trip, you need me!”

Keith rolls his eyes and Shiro is greeting Lance warmly.

“Alright, well I have a cryo-pod with my name on it.” Shiro began to move away and Keith almost wanted to reach out and stop him.

Lance eyes Shiro with what Keith would only describe as puppy-dog look, small and searching.

“Okay.” Lance says and Keith expects a joke, but Lance just fist-bumps Shiro and sees him off. He turns back to Keith, “so.”

“So.” Keith responds as he moves towards the door.

“Time to save the day.”

Keith looks at the ceiling, “just don’t mess it up.”

Lance hovers closer to him and then Keith feels a peck on the cheek before he knows what to do. He slaps a hand over the spot instantly and mouth hangs open. He glances at Lance who winks at him.

"What was that?" Keith knew it was a kiss, but he still asks.

“For luck.” Lance says with a cheeky grin.

“Um,” Keith’s face heats up and he hates it.

“And team-hot stuff is in the lead!” He pumps his fist in the air and Keith hides a tiny unironic smile, the display was too absurd not to.

“Hot stuff? I’m the one with fire breath, loser.”

“Oh, whatever.” Lance hand waves him as he goes through the ship door.

They get in position in the cockpit and the machine sputters to life, Keith closes his eyes like he’s about to pray and then leaves the hanger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 10
> 
> thinking of changing the title again to 'Flight Boys and Slight Kisses' since that is super cute and sounds nice, but 26 kisses keeps the brand strong and adds to the story (like the kiss count and number of chapters), I dunno, do people have preferences?


	7. The Planet Around the Dying Sun

If Lance had to eyeball it he’d say Zanzabar was between the size of the moon and Mars, which was a large range, but he doesn’t claim to be very good at eyeballing things.

It was a grey, grey dot on the horizon with an orange twinge to it and little specks streaming to-and-fro the planet.

It orbited a red-sun, Lance blinked at it slowly and then blinked at Keith, he breathed ‘red dwarf,' a huge red orb that filled the sky. Their sun was slowly expanding, puffing out, dying. It sort of made his stomach flip and a real feeling of how surreal this is was sinking in.

He looked at his lap as they approached slowly, “this is real, huh?” He says out loud, “we are all the way across the universe...that’s a whole new sun.”  
  
Keith glanced at him and his jaw seemed to tighten, “look.” Keith says haltingly, “this is uh, not forever?” His voice went up at the end and Lance snickered.

“Don’t hurt yourself buddy.” He reached over to pat him on the back but Keith leaned away.

“What?”  
  
“You’re trying to comfort me,” he wiped his nose on his jacket sleeve, “nice.”  
  
Keith shakes his head, “just... keep your eyes forward, we need to watch out for any Galra ships.”

Lance rubbed his head, “fine, fine. But damn, Imma teach you the art of human interpersonal skills before our space trip into the unknown is done.”

“Interpersonal. Big word.” Keith says dryly with a hint of a smile. “For you.”

Lance huffs, “rude.” He looks around him, “when we get planetside I’m getting a rolled up newspaper and bopping you on the nose. Or spritz bottle.”  
  
Keith looked up at the ceiling surly, “how do you know they even have newspapers?” He asks duly.

“Cause,” Lance shrugs, “universal constants? I wouldn’t be surprised if they had space-Archie. Space-Garfield. Terrible gossip columns.” Lance squares his shoulders and sighs gently.

“Are you getting misty-eyed over newspapers?” Keith navigated them closer to the planet’s orbit and they can see the place teeming with docked ships and generally traffic coming in and out.

"Nostalgic." Lance answers and tilts his head and grips the side of his seats, “my mama worked as a receptionist, ya know? I used to go to her office after school and doodle across all the magazines and stuff they put out for the patient to read. Oh they got pissed, but my mama always circled her favorite articles and had me read them outloud to her. Even after I got the hang of reading and junk.” He shrugs and Keith side-eyes him.

Keith coughed and seemed like he wanted to say something, "That's," He clears his throat again.

Lance examines the side of his profile, “Just miss her.”

Lance watched Keith’s eyebrows knit-together and see the thought-process Keith was struggling with. “That’s rough buddy.” He responds stiffly.

Lance giggles with his shoulders shaking and an off feeling that Keith Gyeong was easier to understand than he first thought.

“What?” Keith stuck out his bottom lip.

“Nothing.” He stretches and puts his hands behind his head, “you’re just lucky you're good at flying.”  
  
“And if I couldn’t fly?” The question was tentative.

“You can always strip!” He cries and Keith’s face washes over with surprise.

Keith sounds like he’s choking on his tongue at that exclamation and sputters something nondescript, Lance was laughing with his all whole body when they make it close enough to Zanzabar.

He’s still teasing Keith about ‘quitting this whole piloting business and becoming “Teddy Bear Jones” or “Desert Bloom Body.” He may have winked. A couple times.

“Sshh,” Keith finally quiets him with a hand wave, “someone is trying to hail us.”

“Uh,” Lance looks around, “do you think…” He tries to see as far as he could, but there are too many ships to really hone in on one type.

He bites his lip and keeps thinking he sees a purple one.

Keith clears his voice and presses a button, “hello.” He greets hollowly and Lance cringes.

“Docking papers and purpose in Zanzabar.” A voice with a slight Brooklyn accent for some reason answers them.

“Uh, right,” Keith seems to glance at Lance for help, Lance just makes an ‘I dunno’ motion. “We’ll be right down with those.”  
  
The voice sighs, “do you have to? You can just download them to us.”  
  
Lance watches Keith swift through their options, “they’re hard copy.” Lance says through his teeth.

“Fine.” The voice relents, “do you have anything to declare?”

Lance couldn’t believe the space TSA was a universal constant of all things.

“No, er, captain.”  
  
“Captain?” The voice chuckles, “I like that. Alright, unidentified carrier, come in real slow up to the bay of satellite 280.”

“Of course, yes, we’ll just, that. Right now.” Keith switched off the intercom and went into a nosedive.

Lance braced himself against the ceiling, “what the hell are you doing?” Lance’s stomach flips as they swoop near the atmosphere.

“Sneaking onto the planet.” Keith declares and slips past the traffic lanes like _he’s_  threading the needle as the tailor.

“This is more terrifying as a passenger.” Lance comments and grabs onto Keith’s jacket instinctively.

“Yeah, but unlike you, I know what I’m doing.” They nearly get hit by what looks like a tanker.

“Ah! No you don’t.”  
  
“Get ready.” He aims the ship sideways and they start to solidly enter the atmosphere in a show of heated metal and drastically too-steep angles.

The intercom fitz’s to life, “What are you doing--?!” Keith turns it off again.

“Wuh-aaahh,” They nearly hit a dozen other traffic lanes of docking and undocking transports and Keith barely misses every single one.

If Lance wasn’t biting his own lip, the wild look in Keith’s eye might have been compelling, fun. But it wasn’t and Lance had a distinct sense of being Hunk- he promised to puke directly on Keith when they land.

“Tch,” Keith’s eyes were narrowed, “how does this place have so much city? We need somewhere to land.”

Lance looked outside and not at the skies of moving parts- he was right, it was miles and miles of metal and grey and landing strips and crowded streets. Lance hums and there was something compelling to it.

“Should I sing a Whole New World now or later?” Lance asks.

“Later.” Keith gets lower and his eyes are marked on a little white glider that trailed them. “We need to lose them.”

“Space police,” Lance runs his fingers through his short hair, and then his eyes spot a brown speck, he grabs onto Keith again, “that way! There’s something.”  
  
They jet right above the buildings towards the dusty brown until they find a cave system. “Good job Lance.” Keith says and Lance isn’t sure if he hallucinated that part.

They dive in and out of the cave structures until the white glider is gone and they land in a cool shadow of a valley.

Lance immediately jumps out of the passenger’s seat and hugs the nearest land form. “Oh baby,” he could have kissed it, “never leave me again.”  
  
“Should I leave you two alone?” Keith comments as he faces away from him and looks into the horizon.

“Yeah, thank you, this is my rock wife, rock husband...Rock harem.” Lance taps on the side of the boulder, “we’re gonna make beautiful terraform together.”

Keith just snorts, “Come on,” Keith gestures towards and starts walking, “we have something better to do than seduce the rubble.”  
  
“Speak for yourself,” Lance grumbles because he can and starts following Keith’s back anyway.

They trek across large gully’s and twisting formations of pale brown-yellow rock that all seems to look the same to Lance, Keith stops every now and then to make marks for them to follow on the way back.

Lance kicks the dirt and complains and little more than he liked to admit. They at least make it out to a dusty plain before the sun is anywhere near the horizon.

“Look Keith,” Lance says amiably, “the desert. Do you feel at home yet? Or do you need like a shack and some weird feelings to follow.”  
  
Keith’s eyes follow Lance like he’s disappointed in him. “Look!” He points and Lance jumps and follows his gaze.

“What?”  
  
“An idiot box. Do _you_ feel at home yet?”

Lance scowls, “I don’t see anything.”  
  
“It’s invisible. Keep going.” Lance grumbles at him.  
  
They continue their journey and Lance sees why adventurers gloss over these parts: everything looks the same and he’s thirsty.

Lance feels a giddy feeling building in his gut as he sees the tall spires and oblong-buildings reaching into the sky.

“Whoa,” he breaths, it was like something out of his sci-fi novels.

Keith nods, “yeah.”  
  
They take deep breaths before they step on the chalky roads.

People, _no,_ aliens, bustle and bargain in large crowds down the streets, a noisy hub of sound and color-- and weird smells.

Lance covers his nose, “it’s like New New York.”  
  
Keith blinks at him, “you been there?”  
  
He nods and rubs his runny nose, “School trip.”

“Well, keep close, we can’t get mugged or lost, we don’t have time for that.”  
  
“Don’t be worried for my wellbeing.” Lance steps ahead of him, “and also, you can follow _me_.”

Lance grabs Keith’s sleeve and drags him by lizard-people, gelatinous blobs and food vendors throwing what might be flies at them.

Lance scans the crowd and finds something humanoid.

“Hello ma'am!” He greets happily, “you wouldn’t happen to--”  
  
The woman-like creature opens her mouth and lets out an ungodly scream.

“Alright then.” Lance takes Keith in the opposite direction from whatever that was. Keith was oddly quiet and prickly as they make their way further into the heart of the city.

They stop and try to ask for directions at a couple locations and more friendly looking creatures.

“Medicine,” Lance kept saying, “get-better-drug. Medicine.” He mouths at a flag-covered bird person, they look offended and turn away.

“White cough, Fisks, death-maker or whatever.” Keith was having no better luck with asking a vendor.

Lance groans and gets a hold of Keith, “this isn’t working.”  
  
“No shit.” Lance sticks his tongue out at the grumpy boy.

“Let’s keep walking, maybe we’ll see a red cross or something.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“They’ll still ask us for money, but it might be worth it for once.”  
  
Lance drags Keith further on, the light starts to go down, setting the orange sky into a fiery haze on the horizon.

Lance discretely coughs into his jacket sleeve, Keith tenses behind him.

“Did you just cough?”  
  
“No.” Lance returns quickly, “I uh, gagged. This place smells like rotten eggs.”  
  
Keith’s mouth twists sideways, but he doesn’t ask again, they stop and accept some clear liquid that Lance thanked the heavens and whatever space lord controlled everything that it was water.

“I don’t like this.” Keith articulates slowly.

Lance nods and sips the drink, hoping to ease his aching throat, “yes, good. Expressing yourself is good. How does it make you feel?”  
  
“Shut up. It shouldn’t be taking this long. We shouldn’t be.” Keith comments introspectively.

Lance shrugs, “as long as they are in their pods they’ll be fine.”  
  
“For now.” Lance stomach flips again and he turns away from the gloomy boy.

“Thank you for the fine drink, my pretty lady.” Lance instead says to the merchant, who was more of a slug-creature with many arms.

She covers her face and laughs, Lance lights up. “The taste is made better by the presence of an angel like yourself.” He puts on a winning smile and Keith groans next to him.

“Angel?” She blinks her small perfectly-round, black eyes and a jagged smile crosses a frog-like mouth.

“Yes! A perfect display.” He pets the webbed hand of the formless girl and she changes color from yellow to a deeper blue.

“Oh, stop it.”  
  
“Hey,” Keith turns on them, “do you know where we could get any medicine?”

She seems to ignore him as she pets Lance’s face and giggles in his direction. “What else?”  
  
“Uh, you are very curvy, so sweet, like, um, sugar! And beauty.” He purrs and she seems to eat it up.

“Excuse me,” Keith approaches and loops his arm around Lance’s, “me and my _boyfriend_ are looking for something.” That got their attention.  
  
“Boyfriend?” Her hand retracted, the statement seeming to translate well.

“Boyfriend?” Lance repeats with his eyebrows quirked up.

“My love.” Keith says sarcastically, “he’s sick. We need to see a doctor.”  
  
“Oh,” she blinks her little eyes. “Oh no! He does seem awfully thin.”  
  
Keith nods, “you wouldn’t believe, the smell too.”  
  
“That’s him?” She asks in a whisper and Lance makes an indignant noise.

“I’m afraid so, my boyfriend is terribly ill. All over. In the head.”  
  
She puts her hand to her heart region. “You have to go to the apothecary district!”

Lance lets go of Keith’s weird behavior to get the information they were looking for, she gives them directions to an entire sector dedicated to medicine.

They thank her and head off, she dabs at her eye when Lance says goodbye. “Get better.”  
  
“I will.” Lance grumbles before coughing into his elbow- which might not have been for show, Keith eyes him.

“What was that?” Lance finally says when they are out of earshot.

“I was getting help for my deliriously ill boyfriend. Keep up.” Keith was setting a rapid pace as they make their way once more past low hanging buildings and chaotic foot traffic.

“I was getting information out of her too ya know!”

“I did it quicker.” Lance sneezes and Keith narrows his eyes, “and we need the cure. Soon.” Lance shakes his head, “and do we really want to be here at night?”

Lance locks his jaw and they make the long journey across the planet, his feet are complaining at him by the time they make it to a little gate with a drop of liquid symbol on it.

Keith was already arguing with someone, “what do you mean you’re shutting down for the night?” Keith was red in the face and Lance could feel his own spirits drop.

The towering humanoid with a gas-mask shrugs at him, “you don’t want to be out here at sundown boy. Even tourists should know that, this is Dellra district.”  
  
That didn’t make sense to him, but he could already feel them getting behind the eight ball on this one.

Lance groans and tears at his hair, “nothing is working out for us today.”  
  
The gas-mask man points them to a ‘sleep-hostel’ and Lance sags at the edges and follows, not before escaping Keith for a moment to hack into the open air, finally relieving the tickle in his throat.

When he catches up, Keith was done buying them a room for the night with the money Allura had given them.

Lance stretches, “I’m ready to sleep like a dead horse.”  
  
Keith elbows him, “that’s not an expression.”  
  
“Cry me a table Keith.” He elbows him back and a little smile forms on Keith’s face, Lance feels like he won some sort of prize he hadn’t been entered into in the first place.

“Anyway,” Keith says with his eyes ahead, “I’m not sure if our translators working, they said they were booked, and then gave us this. It was a hard conversation.” The creature as Lance had observed communicated in buzzes and clicks.

Lance sighs when they open the door, “fuck bugs.” Or bug people.

“Of course,” Keith said back and his 5’5 height seems to shrink further down.

They only had one bed, if you call it that, more of nest really, and one huge window in the corner with nothing else.

“Welp,” Lance kicks his shoes off, “I don’t care. See you in the morning.”  
  
His limbs ached in way they shouldn’t and Lance really wanted to sleep off the growing nausea in his gut and pain in his throat.

He crashed into the soft round mattress and stuffed a pillow under his head.

“Just like that?”  
  
“Like that.” Lance confirmed and closed his eyes, he expected Keith to bugger off or sleep by the door like some weird sentry.

He feels a dip in the mattress next to him. Lance could swear he smiles, instead he assures Keith that he kicks in his sleep and Keith pushes him over.

They settle in a weird dance of limbs and finding the least incriminating position, Lance is half way asleep before his head hits the pillow.

  
The tickle isn’t going away, Keith whispers something to him, but it was too late for his consciousness to catch it and he drifts off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 10
> 
> thank you for support! I do appreciate all kudos, comments and feedback


	8. It Was Always Weird

Keith woke up with something plastered against his side: warm and alive, it wrapped around his torso like an anaconda trying to constrict it's next victim. He let five minutes pass feeling the tickle of someone’s hair under his chin, and the steady inhales and exhales of a rib cage against his own.

He blinks open his eyes, and yes, he confirmed there was more cuddling going on than a basket of bunnies in a winter storm. Which made it sound cuter than it actually was because could feel that his pillow was wet with drool and this is what suffering felt like.

Not to mention the violent shivering.

“Hey,” Keith says gently, mostly since waking Lance rudely would probably lead to getting punched in the face. Lance was that sort of guy. “Hey.”

Lance just curled around him further like a koala against a tree trunk, arms and legs wrapped around his torso and head tucked beneath his chin, an impressive feat for someone taller than him.

Keith puffs air out his nose, “hey, stupid!” Keith tries to shake him with his one free arm. Lance grumbles and Keith rolls his eyes to the ceiling and names a few warlords he’d rather kiss under his breath.

He tries a more delicate approach, neither of them had to be embarrassed by the fallout of this if he just sort of...rolled away. He picks Lance’s fingers up one by one from their claw-like grip and then tries to wiggle off to the side.

Concerningly, Lance was still shivering from head to toe, his fingers vibrating and Keith could feel the shaking through every inch of his body. Not to mention the forehead pressed to Keith’s sternum was hot like a stove and the other boys breaths came out in ragged gulps of air.

“Shit,” Keith murmured as Lance gave a rattling wheeze.

He continues to wiggle away. Lance hang on tighter and mumbled something- either in another language or repeating the bible backwards after a nasty possession. He had that type of voice.

Keith was in the process of gently lifting Lance’s leg when his elbow brushed the other boys side, feather-light, and Lance erupted in motion, his legs kicking out and hands shoot up.

“Ow!” Lance kicked him, “what the hell?” Keith fully pushed Lance off of him, who fell on the floor in a heap.

The other boy blinked several times and then sneezed, “what was that for?” Lance rubbed his ass.

“You kicked me!” Keith also rubbed his gut.

“Oh,” Lance chuckled, “you okay?”

“I guess!” He hissed and threw his arms in the air.

“I warned you," Lance grinned, "I kick.”

Keith sighed and exasperation and goes to help him up, “you also cuddle.”

Lance’s eyes darted down and away, “really?" His eyes dart around before landing on Keith again, "Can you blame me though, it’s freezing in here.” He was shivering again.

Keith’s hand changed trajectory, and went for Lance’s forehead, he frowns. “You feel hot.”

“Well thanks sweetheart, I am hot.” Lance tried to bounce his eyebrows up at him it seemed, but erupted into a coughing fit.

“We need to get the medicine. Now.” Keith said flatly and got to his feet, reaching for his jacket and bayard. Lance followed him, wobbled, and Keith reached out and steadied him on his feet, “maybe you should stay here.”

Lance shook his head vigorously and righted his footing, “I may be deathly ill, but you can’t lock me up to take all the credit for yourself.”

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose, “I don’t think I’ll ever understand your priorities.”

Lance shrugged and his signature smile was back on his face, “my number one priority is getting something to eat right now.” Lance felt his throat, “maybe soup?”

Keith nodded, noting in his head it was a good sign that he still had an appetite.

Keith pays for the room, albeit with Lance whispering in his ear to ‘sleep and retreat. Snooze and lose ‘em. Conk out and rock out.’ since the room wasn’t that good and Lance swears he touched Keith’s ass too much to have to pay. Keith doesn’t reply to that.

“Anyway, I’m just saying, one man should not be that close to their rival in the middle of the night. Too much skin and ass, and God, it’s so bony, you should get that checked out.” Lance sniffled and Keith almost cracked his head open hitting it on a low hanging door frame.

“You know, forget the medicine, by all means cough your lungs up. I’ll wait.” He says tersely back, “And stop talking about my ass, it will get weird.”

“It was always weird.”

They exchange a look with an air of silence that Keith couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it soon became too noisy to talk about it. The market street burst with colors and smells and the distinct chatter of dozens of aliens trying to haggle.

Keith grabs Lance’s sleeve and drags him through the crowds, “don’t get lost.” He murmurs and Lance surprisingly follows with little resistance.

They work their way down the street, beginning at the very first vendor. “Fisks disease.” Keith says bluntly while Lance makes accompanying hand gestures.

“Super space plague,” the tall boy says unhelpfully, “me. I have it.” He points at himself.

The green humanoid with little flaring gills tilts their head to the side, “Never heard of it.”

“Are you sure?” Keith ventures, “we have money.”

“Look kid, I’ve never seen any folks like you, where you from?”

“Earth.”

The alien puts their thumb up, “sounds fake. Beat it, I don’t do business with plants.”

Lance touched his chest and scrunched his chin back until it was at least three chins, “plants? You’re the green one!” He pointed his finger accusatory.

Keith dragged him away, “he thinks we're ‘plants.’ Like planted, undercover.”

Lance snorts and coughs discreetly into his elbow, “this place is kind of getting on my nerves.”

Keith sighs and drags them to the next booth, she says something similar. By the fifth one, Keith is ready to burst a blood vessel himself.

“What do you mean you’ve never heard of it? My friend has it!” Keith could have choked the tall willowy woman with hooves for hands.

She scowls at them and tries to shoo them, “you’re hurting business. Go die on someone else's porch.” She says that to Lance, who was visibly sweating and shaking at that point.

“Lady…” Keith rolls up his sleeve, “one of your bottles is literally labelled ‘cure all’ so does it cure all or not?”

“I’m not selling to you.” She wasn’t looking at him with her wide-set horse eyes.

“Oh yeah?” His eyes narrowed, he felt his blood boil and reached for his bayward, a pair of wide hands landed on his shoulders.

“Cool your jets, this isn’t a bar fight.” Lance says into his ear and pulls him backwards, “we aren’t in a who ‘can do risky shit’ contest.”

Lance eased back into the street and Keith continues to fume, “all I’m saying is that, it’s suppose to cure everything. And your sniffling! Again!”

“Uh,” Lance wiped his nose, “I thought we agreed to ignore my horrible sickness? And the fact you somehow aren’t getting it.” Lance complained, “I must have coughed on you all night last night.”

Keith shakes his head, “whatever, just keep your eyes open.”

They split up again, only to find one tiny wizened creature that would talk seriously with them. The little alien had one eye, a cloak, and bark-like skin twisting from its robe hummed and looked between them.

“Is that the Altean disease?” A deep voice rumbles from and Keith nods.

Lance wobbles, “yeah! I mean...it got a bunch of them.” Lance flinched at the words and it nods.

“I’ve heard of it. The walking disease, people die and they keep on walkin’.” The older fellow starts to laugh and Keith watches Lance get paler.

“Keep walking? Like zombies?” Lance turns to Keith slowly, his eyes wide, “I have the zombie plague,” he mouths and Keith has to take deep breath in through his nose.

Lance gets closer to the bark-like short creature, “do you start eating people, does Keith have to shoot me in the head with the wind blowing in his hair, are brains like, okay tasting?”

The fellow was laughing again, “they just walk. Still creepy with them white patches, but that’s it.”

“Cure.” Keith steps in, “where is the cure.”

The guy shrugs, “I wouldn’t know.”

Keith pulls at his hair and walks around in circles, “okay, is there anything you do know?”

He nods, “If I were you, I’ll just tell ya’, be careful. I don’t think the Dellra like you very much, or those travelers.”

Keith freezes and his eyes glide over the crowd, “travelers?” His gut dropped, he scanned the crowd and looked for any menacing strangers rubbing their hands together and cackling. Finding nothing, he turns back around but the strange creature was already whistling and walking in the other direction.

Keith pulls on Lance, “I don’t like the sound of this.”

Lance leans on him, and Keith can feel his weight shift too much to his shoulder, “now you know how I feel about your voice. Every day.”

Keith puts out his bottom lip, “normally I’d tell you to shut up, but I think we need to keep moving. My skin’s crawling.”

Lance sighs and he uses his superior height to navigate them towards the outer edges of the crowd, finding a narrow alley with hopping pigeon-mice on the ground pecking at the garbage.

“How are you feeling?” Keith whispers as they crouch and he scans the mobs to spot anything unusual.

Lance his head, “you don’t want to know. Though, on the good side, I can no longer smell how bad this place reeks.”

Keith turns up a smile, “I’m jealous.”

Lance elbows him gently and continues to grin down at him, “we have something in common.”

Keith shouldn’t be thinking about his own cheeks heating up at that and the slow warmth in his belly, but he can't help smiling and picking at his jacket sleeve.

“Anyway, we have like three more blocks to cover-”

“Wait.” Keith face jerks to the side, eyes opening and the prickling feelings were building, “we aren’t alone.”

“You got that right buddy. Not alone in the universe, or the grocery store. Or here and now, think positive.” He rubs Keith’s shoulder.

Keith had stopped listening to him, but he latched onto his shoulder, “call Allura.”

Lance examines Keith’s profile before his face slid into a still mask and he nods.

“Okay. Alright.”

Keith reaches for his bayard, fingers wrapping around the handle. A group of figures in dark hoods and something purple slashed across their chest stand at the end of the block. They don’t move but their heads remain painted in their direction.

Keith calculates the rattling breaths in Lance’s lungs and thinks about contingency plans that didn’t involve the other boy playing Cough, Sneeze, Die on the next leg of their trip. Of running. Very fast.

“Allura?” Lance says behind him. “What’s that background noise?”

“Lance?” Allura’s voice could be heard faintly coming from their wrist computers, a sizzling sound surrounded her, “have you found the cure? Can you come back?” Her tone sounded hopeful, urgent.

“No, wait, how was healing pod? Did it do anything- okay! What is that sound?”

Allura cleared her throat, “we need you back.”

“The Galra are here!” Hunk’s voice came shrilly from the speakers, “Real. Evil as ever. Here. Tell them to get their butts into seats and back to the castle.”

“Okay, I know laser beams when I hear them- goddammit this life is so weird that I can say that, also, I’m sick and Keith wins at like, immune system gladiator.”

“Yes,” an explosion sounds from behind her, “we’re sending the other paladins out now. But please, return with the cure. We-” An explosion follows.

Keith nodded, “we know the Galra are here.”

“We do?”

Keith glances at him, “we need to move.”

“Allura, hold tight.” Lance speaks into the communicator.

“Tell them to open a wormhole.” Keith was reaching for Lance, “and run when I say so.”

“Uh, Allura, run when I-”

“No, you.”

“Jesus, Keith Urban, you’re serious face is like looking into a graveyard at midnight. One moment.”

“Oh a moment? Then we can run for our lives?”

Lance gave him a thumbs up and Keith wanders what bad luck he had to end up here.

Lance tells Allura to heat up the engines, they’re coming home, Allura was giving instructions to the either others when they hang up.

Keith keeps his eyes on the sentries, both of him he gathers were drones and still weak at that point, Keith thinks about the prospects of sneaking versus stabbing.

“Uh, how about sneaking, let's try sneaking first?”

“What?” Keith draws his attention up.

“You were talking out loud. Anyway,” Lance pulls Keith to his feet, “now. Follow me, act natural.”

Keith stiffly walks back into the crowd, “on three.”

They burst into a full sprint when they reach the open street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: still 10


	9. Feed a Fight, Starve a Fever

The run out the city certainly didn’t do anything good for Lance’s health. The streets were smoggy and the roads were uneven- and Keith, Keith was not good for his health.

“Where you going?” He yelled when they first took off and Keith make a sharp left turn back into a murmur of people instead of into the open alley.

“Getting the ‘Cure All’….and then taking out these drones.”  
  
“No!” Lance scrambles after him, almost busting his knee when he ran into a table on the turn. He watches Keith lunge for small vial on the horse-woman’s booth.

He pockets it and keeps running, she turns around and makes the connection in her head. “Stop! Freaking thieves!” She yells and the streets eyes are drawn to the sprinting Keith, Lance follows.

“See? Bad ideas, bad ideas all around, don’t go through that door Keith, don’t steal in the middle of a big chase Keith, don’t make out with me in the rain while Troye Sivan plays in the background, wait-”

Keith was skidding to a halt as a humanoid in a white hat and a bat blocked his path. “Hey kid, put that back now, right and easy.”

  
Keith glared, and his bayard sprang to life. “I'm busy, sorry.” He raised his sword and Lance groans.

“Why are you like this?” He moaned and watches Keith’s sword clash with the metal bat in a flurry of force and speed, as Keith dodged and the huge humanoid beat the air in front of him.

Lance grabs Keith’s elbow and starts dragging him away as the security guard bashed the ground right where his feet were.

“You just had to steal the snake oil.”  
  
Keith shook his head, “I have to finish this.” He growls and kicks off to launch himself back into action, but a spray of laser beams bounces off the security guard from behind them.

Lance blinks and looks behind him, the Galra drones had sprung to life and their guns were painted in their direction

“I don’t suppose they have the safety on?” Lance pulls out his own bayard, but his gaze falls over the many bystanders scrambling to get out of the way of the street brawl.

“Shit,” Lance curses and jumps down to avoid a shot to the head.

Keith fumbles out of Lance’s grip and runs at the drone and hacks into its arm. Lance shoots the nearest drone, but finds his eyes drawn to a scared looking bird-person, it's eyes wide and yellow with fear. Lance sighs and goes to get Keith again.

The boy was gutting a drone with his sword while the security guard tried to get a hold of his neck. Lance threw himself into the middle of it and grabbed Keith by the hair and yanks him off to the side.

“We have to run.” A statement his head said 'yes' to, and his lungs were already sending their regards to him from their own grave.

Keith shook his head, “there are only five drones. One guard. We have the advantage-”  
  
“We have people here, the Galra are firing on us into the crowd. We need to run.” Lance says admittedly, trying to show Keith that he was serious.  
  
“Oh.” Keith said simply and Lance practically picked him up and hauled him away.

“If we’re going to be galactic heroes we can’t let people get shot up.” Lance tried to explain again, but Keith was nodding.

“Yeah,” Keith grabbed his sleeve and started running, “thanks Lance.”

Lance grunts and they find their way down to the next large street and towards the caves again. His eyes start to blur and his nose starts explaining the water cycle to him in detail, he pushes his body to stop being an asshole and keep going.

It wasn’t easy. They encountered two more drones, which Lance both shoot before they reach the exit out back into the desert.

Keith frowns as the robots collapse onto the ground.

“What?” Lance laughed as he catches his breath, “disappointed you didn’t get to take them down?”

Keith pats him on the back, “I’m just impressed you're still standing.”  
  
Lance coughs violently and wipes at his brow, “don’t get used to it. I’m passing out the second we get back to the castle.”

Keith nods, “just, get there.” He pushes him and they hear the clanging of metal on metal behind them, they chug their feet through the sand into the wide open plains and the cave complex.

Lance’s ears were popping and his lungs screaming for him to cough again and maybe curl up and became catatonic- whichever eased the irritation first. 

His breaths came out in ragged puffs of air that sounded like aluminum foil being shook and he swears he’s hearing colors by the time they make it to the cave complex.

“Wait,” Lance has to say, his vision blurring, “wait.” He takes a knee before they have to start scaling the caves back to their ship. “Maybe we could…maybe.” He searches for some suggestion that didn’t worry Keith about Lance’s potential afterlife.

Keith just nods and helps him to one of the deeper caverns, “We can wait them out.” Keith murmured in a very un-Keith like voice.

Lance may have muttered his thanks in a very un-Lance like way. Keith positions them behind a rampart and Lance concentrates on watching his hands _not_ swim before his vision like excited fish.

Which they were. Along with a lot of colors and lights and sound like he was underwater, Lance closes his eyes and takes slow even breaths, slumping against the cave wall and hoping Keith didn’t see. He lets himself dip into a drowsy state as he waited to feel a little better.

“Allura? Allura?” That was Keith on his communicator. “They knew we were coming here. It was a trap.”

Allura’s voice faintly answers him.

“You’re breaking up,” Even Lance would hear the static from Keith's speaker. “Alright, well, he’s not looking good, his eyes are all, uh, _bad_ and there are some sort of white patches forming on his skin.”  
  
Keith was hovering closer to him and Lance could barely make out the voice on the other side.

“Oh no, Keith, that’s stage two. He’ll be highly contagious, wear a mask if you go near him, and gloves.”

“Stage two, is that the, the one where...” Keith turned his back and walked a little farther away, Lance thinks he can possible see the blue fairy from Pinocchio.

“Okay, yeah, yes, I hear you, we’ll be back before the wormhole closes- be safe.” Keith says the last two words so softly Lance doubts they hear him.

Lance was bargaining with the blue fairy to make him a real goddamn boy instead a shivering collection of germs and feeling like crap when Keith gets back.

“Okay, please tell me you’re seeing dancing mushrooms and the big blue women too.”  
  
Keith runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head, “Lance,” his voice croaks, “I’m going to pick you up and carry you back to the ship.”

That gets Lance’s attention, “no.” He kicks away, “stay back, I’m serious.”  
  
Keith grits his teeth, “we don’t have time for this, you’re in the second stage or some other bullshit.”  
  
Lance’s shoulders crept up to his ears and he shrunk up against the wall, “I heard them...and you need gloves, and a mask- dude, I won’t have this on my consciousness.”  
  
“I won’t get sick.” Keith says simply and tries to approach him again.

Lance shakes his head furiously, “fuck that, I have a zombie-pestilence ruining my sinuses, you need to stay back.”  
  
“You’re not making sense Lance, you’re not thinking the straight with the fever.” Keith sounded frustrated, Lance just glared in a ‘I dare you to’ eye contact.

“I’ll bite.” He warns and starts to scramble further into the cave.

Keith groans and walks around in circles, mumbling to himself in some sort of ghost conversation. He turns to Lance sharply, “I’m not going to get your disease.”

Lance huffs and resists Keith trying to move him anywhere, Keith keeps muttering and pulling out his hair.

Finally, Keith stood in front of Lance as Lance thought about cute girls and maybe some sort of 50’s themed funeral (they’d have to wear poodle skirts and sunglasses).

“I,” Keith says slowly, “ _won’t_ get this.” He reaches for his shirt bottom and that gets Lance’s consideration.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Keith lifted his shirt off his head and Lance whimpers.

“I am so hot already with the fever and dying, please don’t take your shirt off.” Lance closes his eyes and thinks about baseball.  
  
“What?” Keith already was done with the process, Lance turns his eyes up, but not before spotting something on Keith’s side.

He blinks at looks at it again, “interesting...birthmark.” He comments, unfortunately out loud.

Keith shakes his head and approaches Lance until Lance can make out that his right side was purple and covered with a short mat of hairs.

“Uh,” Lance rubs at his eyes, “I think the fever is getting to me. You’re right.”

Keith puts his hands on his hips, and Lance really tries not to stare at his hip bones that dipped into his belt buckles, the precise-V that Lance was definitely going to think about too much from now on.

“I,” Keith took a deep breath in front of him and then exhaled slowly, “my mom worked on the International Space station.”  
  
“Okay?” Lance etches Keith’s abdomen into his memory.

“Until she got pregnant. Then we went back to Seoul, then Canada to live with her sister.”  
  
Lance tilts his head and tries to figure out if this conversation was the real life or if he was still on the Beach of Veradera getting heat stroke.

“She had me.” Keith said sullenly and his hands flexes besides his sides.

“I’m happy for you?” Lance tilted from side to side.

“Then I was four. We were on the highway, it was snowing, she didn’t see the turn coming-”

“Whoa, whoa, there.” Lance’s eyebrows shot up and he leans towards Keith.  
  
“She didn’t make it. I wasn’t supposed to either.” Lance held his breath and watched Keith’s dark eyelashes flutter shut.

Lance reached his hand out, “what are you telling me.”  
  
“This,” keith gestured at his side, “it was, it grew over the...injury.” Lance’s fever-riddled brain kept his hand outreached and Keith flinched back.

“Oh,” Lance says gently, his hand grazes the plated purple side of Keith’s torso. Keith takes a deep, shaking breath and he guides Lance’s hand to the surface of his skin.

It was soft. Soft like rabbit fur or cat’s ears, and underneath the little hairs was a hard plate that wrapped around his side and felt as solid as armadillo skin.

“Oh.” Lance exhales and his fingers trail delicately up and down the growth, “so you're-"  
  
“Don’t say it.” Keith’s voice croaked and his eyes were still closed, “let’s just, I’m just not going to get your sickness.”

Lance nodded, he nodded mutely and he traced the outline of the patch of purple, up and down and right next to his bellybutton. He’s not sure if he should say sorry or something just as lame.

"So, you're telling me you've been a purple furry this entire time."

Keith laughs under breath and then thwaps him in the side of the head, "shut up."

"Help me up you giant purple dinosaur."

"Sure." Keith goes to put his shirt back on, and luckily Lance doesn't say 'no, wait, stop' out loud.

He comes back to pick him up and Lance hangs his head on his shoulder, "I won't tell you know."  
  
Keith stared at him solemnly, "make it through this...and I won't care."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 10, but like, with an alien now
> 
> yeh, I joined the bandwagon, but some of ya' already guessed that before this chapter


	10. Down the Rabbit Hole

The first sign things were about to get worse was when Keith started to hear something in the distance, metallic and heavy, it pulled on his toes to stay in that direction and keep following. Meanwhile, Lance could barely keep his head up as they walked, sniffling and coughing, the general look of a man about to pass out.

Keith fixed his eyes on the other boy, his was face red with fever and eyes dull and lulling shut, Keith's eyes narrowed.

“Hey, buddy,” Keith shakes him as they slowly creep towards their ship, “stay with me here.”  
  
Lance shakes his head and Keith continues to support his weight with one arm slung around his shoulder.

“This sucks,” Lance croaks when his eyes flutter open and his feet drag, “like on a scale from terrible to marrying Allura on a mountain while you swoon, this is the absolute balls.”  
  
Keith shakes his head, “why am I swooning? Wait, never mind, just keep talking.” _Stay awake._

“Anyway, you are swooning from the outright display of manliness, Pidge is cheering, Hunk is crying- like so much. Man, oh God, Hunk. Shiro may also cry, but one tear that he wipes away quickly, in fact fuck it, everyone cries, you, me, the mountain.”  
  
Keith chuckles, “okay, crying mountains. Keep going.”

They stumble up the cliff faces they had navigated with ease the day before, slinking up sharp ridges and towards the markers Keith made. The days on Zanzabar were apparently shorter than on earth and sun crept down sooner than later to draw long shadows into the dirt.

“The cake is lemon flavored, the theme is alien-human royalty with like transformers as the cake topper-”  
  
Keith snickering, he probably shouldn’t, seeing as Lance was practically delirious, “are you just going to describe your ideal wedding to me?”  
  
“Some of us have dreams, is that alright with you Keith?” He huffed and Keith shook his head.

“No, naturally, it’s lovely.” It sounded sardonic even to his own ears.  
  
Lance stuck his tongue out at him and almost licked his cheek, to which Keith almost drops him for it.

“I’m just saying, no one really likes lemon cake, it’s tangy and can go really wrong, I had some out of a dumpster from this expensive party and even it-”  
  
"Keith! Lord, the problem there isn't the cake, it's the dumpster. Oh my God," Lance shakes his head, "you poor, orphan Annie wild animal.”  
  
“It was after work!” Keith defends, and bickering felt almost natural in the bending sunset of a very long day. “And it was just the thing to do at the time, catering is like that.”

“Anyway, as I saying before you revealed your raccoon-like lifestyle, the cake will not be dumpster-flavored lemon. Just lemon.”

“Still doesn't sound good.” Keith wrinkled his nose and dragged Lance over the next archway.

“Don’t even with me,” Lance stuck a wobbly-finger in the air and Keith was chuckling as a very unsteady Lance chastised him. “The ring-bearer can be one of the mice, unless you want to.”  
  
“No, I’m good.” Keith responds in a bored tone.

“Right, mice ring-bearers, Coran is the minister, and he is absolutely not allowed to cook, my uncle Jorge can cook, like pizza and chips and guacamole…” Lance’s head drifted down and his eyelids fluttered shut over what looked like bruises.

“Hey!” Keith shook him and jutted his hip into Lance’s leg, “hey, idiot, uh, what kind of wedding is that anyway? No one has pizza at weddings.”  
  
Keith holds his breath, but Lance eventually sparks to life, “I would! Also, like a chocolate fountain.”  
  
“There we go. That’s practical.”  
  
“But like, human-sized, I want to swim in it while everyone else watches.” Keith snorts and Lance has a lopsided smile.  
  
That all seems to keep him awake and Keith is relieved but continues to have to draw his attention back to his fictitious situations (though Lance may quickly shine to calling him ‘garbage mouth’).

Keith felt the weight of the ‘Cure All’ in his pocket and he the final ridge seemed to come into view, relief flooded over him, they might be able to do this after all.

Of course, the other side of Keith’s brain told him that was wishful thinking and he swears he kept hearing noises from just beyond that point- metal and gun shots. Something was pulling him towards it.

“Okay,” Keith heaved as he supported Lance, “I hear you. Allura’s heels will be silver with white leaves-”  
  
“God, you really are listening.” Lance huffs into his ear and sounded almost impressed.

“There wasn’t much else to do dumbass, now, listen.” Keith grasps his face and guides it up to look Keith in the face, “you listening?”  
  
“Keith, I hear you, but I can’t make you anything but a best man. I know you’d want to marry Allura too, but double weddings are tacky-”

Keith shakes his head, “okay, I get it, you are delirious, but you have to listen, our ship is over that hill.”  
  
Lance stands up straighter and some of his weight is taken onto his own feet, “why didn’t you say so?” The other boy looks like he’s going to take off, Keith keeps a firm grip on him.

“No. I don’t think we’re going to be alone. You need to stay back here and wait for it be all clear-”

“What?!” Lance jumped and staggered back, Keith makes sure his heels don’t hit a nob in the earth and send him sprawling.

“Coughing on everyone will not actually contribute to the fight.” Keith says evenly and turns back to the soft noise of footsteps on the other side of the ridge.

“I’m not letting you go in there alone.” Lance slung his long arms around Keith’s shoulders and held on tightly, it was almost protective.

Keith snorts and guides them to a sitting position behind a low hill, “this isn’t a brainstorming session Lance. There is one option, and that is fight our way out and get out of here.”

Lance was still shaking his head in circles, they sit behind their coverings for a very still moment, Keith with his eyes closed and trying to calm his churning mind.

He takes deep breaths and the ringing in his ears tells him that they are close, that yes, something was beckoning towards him.

“If I don’t make it out,” Keith took out the ‘Cure All’ from his pocket.

“You want me to lead Voltron?” Lance asks sloppily with a crooked grin on his unfocused face.

Keith makes a face, “what? No, that’s stupid, Allura would...Anyway, I want you to contact the ship and get them down here. You have to do that.”  
  
Lance tried to get to his feet, “I’m coming with you, you aren’t going to fight all those drones by yourself.”

Keith eases Lance back to the ground, “it won’t be just drones. And I’ll be fine,” his lips quirk up, “this is what I’ve been training for.”  
  
“A crazy solo mission? You bastard.” Lance says through his teeth but his body was still gluing him down it seemed.

Keith nods and leaves the bottle of medicine with Lance, “stay put.” He whispers, mostly for himself this time and wiggles out of Lance’s grip.

He crawls over the mound and peers down, a group of three drones and a hooded figure stood around their pod like it was a bonfire they were warming themselves around. Keith grimaces, the cloaked figure was familiar, he had fought one of them before.

“Druid.” Keith jumps when Lance is poised beside him.

“Did you not hear me?” Keith growls at him, Lance crawls closer.

“That is a literal druid and you aren't doing this alone,” Lance’s closes his mouth abruptly, his pupils dilate like supernova.

Keith follows his gaze and finds the druid turning, it’s withered face upturned in a smile. “It’s seen us, we have to-”

He goes to jump to his feet, but when they turn around a puff of smoke erupts in the air, the cloaked figure arose in front of them like the apparition it was.

“Shit.” Keith reaches for his bayard, but the creature was reaching out its hand.

“There you are.” It coos in a voice like the moment before a bullet fires or a grenade clicks.

Lance was on his feet somehow before Keith was, “stay back! We have a war ship behind us that will blast this planet to bits if anything happens to us.”

The druids glowing eyes weren’t on Lance though, they were on him and Keith could feel his pulse blaring in the back of his knees and throat. It wanted something.

"He's right." Keith breaths, "we have Voltron. Our ship is coming for us."

"Your ship?" The voice laughed and it echoed off the cliff faces like cold water dripping down his spine, “you think we don’t know that? You think we aren’t blowing them off this plane of existence?” It’s eyes glowed like homing beacons, cruel and alert.

Keith gulped dryly. “Liar.”

The druid raises its bony hand at him. “Come here.”

“Don’t touch him!” Lance put himself between Keith and the druid in one uneven movement.

Keith shook his head and ducked under Lance’s long arms, he prepares his stance to take on the universe's worst disappearing act. He is about to spring and drive his sword into the druid when his arms and legs seize up.

The hand of the druid clamped around the air in front of it. “Don’t do anything.” It cackled lowly. “I’ve got you.” Every muscle in Keith’s body was rigid and Lance’s eyes go wide beside him as Keith's bayard clatters to the ground and his feet hover off the earth.

“What’s it doing?” Lance croaks and reaches his fingertips towards Keith to ghost over his sides.

Keith trembled and tries to form words as Lance draws his bayard, nothing comes out. “Stop it you sick fuck!” Lance roars and fires into the druid who transports itself an inch to the left to avoid the beam.

“Go get the other one.” The druid says dryly as drones approach from the other side of the hill.

Lance ducks down and aims his gun, he shoots the first drone in the chest plate and the robot dances for a moment in a death spasm before toppling over.

The second drone jumped up over the ridge and came down on Lance’s head with the butt of its gun, hard. Keith tries to struggle towards them, but he’s held in place by some sort of invisible hand. Lance rubs his head and elbows the drone down.

“Ah!” Lance fires upward at the assailant and manages to shoot it’s head off with a couple clean shots, but the final druid is already behind him- it strikes while the other drone falls apart, bashing Lance in the back of the head until Lance clutches at his neck and falls forward.

“No!” Keith finally cried out, to threaten, yell, anything, but his throat constricts next and his mouth hangs open pointlessly. Lance lay crumpled in the sand.

The druid approached him like an oozing shadow, “I’ve heard about you.” It simpers, drawing his attention back, “my brother said he met the red paladin, that he _felt_ interesting.”

Keith’s eyes go wide, trying to find Lance’s slack face as they dart around.

“And I had to check for myself.” The druids face closes in on him, it’s breath like the dark corners of rooms or mist that choked the mornings.

Keith was a sitting duck, the druid reaches out and pets the side of his head, he wants to jerk away and bite its fingers clean off, but he is forced to hang uselessly in the air.

It’s fingers dance up his cheek and its long claws are placed at his temple, they dig in and Keith feels a sudden ripple through his mind. It was delving into his head- he has energy enough to scream.

It lasts for minutes or perhaps seconds, something flitting inside his skull like a vine twisting in the crevices of his thoughts and leaving shadowy imprints. It lasted maybe minutes or seconds of it intruding and Keith feels himself shaking with exhaustion and fury when it’s hand withdraws.

It laughs.

“Come to us when you’re ready red paladin.” The druid turns and starts to float away, the last drone stands at attention, “leave the sick one. He’s dead anyway.” Keith drops to his feet and reaches for the knife on his back, the group of galra turn to leave, “and finish their ship.”  
  
Keith yells as he draws his knife, but he’s thrown off his feet again as he hears a single shot lead to a fiery explosion at his back.

The force blasts Keith to his knees and the front of his head finds a hard edge of a ridge in front of him, the impact sends his thoughts flying and a darkness threatens the edges of his vision.

He watches the galra walk away like assholes who don’t look at explosions and Keith reaches for his wrist communicator.

“Allura, Shiro? Are you there…?” A thick static greets him and Keith’s hands were trembling, “are you okay?” No response, Keith rolls onto his back. “Lance?” He faces the other boy, Lance’s face was slack and bruised.

Keith rubs at the lump on his head before he finds himself sinking, his wrist communicator still sounding off like a bottomless pit of static-noise and their ship smoking behind them in smoldering chunks.

  
Keith tries to get up again, but the world spins and he’s back on the ground, he grabs at Lance’s hand and the world is gone.


	11. Sue Your Gods

Lance’s consciousness tugged at him from his hazy dreams that swam in his mind like fish in a soup pond, droopy and confused. 

He groans to life with a pounding in his head and a streak of light catching on his eyelids. A painful thumping in his temples sang to him somberly, ‘stop, wait a minute, put a little aspirin in it.’ He didn’t have any aspirin.

He feels his head and throat next, his fever seemed to have broken but his throat felt like he tried to swallow a sandpaper corndog and choked on it. He glances at his hands, abstract blotches of white covered them, he turns over and coughs into the dusty sand before thumping his head back down.

“Go to space they said, it’ll be fun, save the universe. Sure, but no one ever tells you about the space plague or getting socked in the head and passing out in the middle of nowhere.” He grumbles to himself and holds his aching head in his hands.

He’s halfway into contemplating going back to sleep in the least terrible position on the ground when his eye catches a figure crumpled besides him.

“Keith?” Lance jumps to a sitting position, he wipes at his nose and reaches towards him in the dirt, “Hey, hey, Mr. Fingerless gloves.”

Keith was curled up into himself in a little painful looking ball, one of his hands was reaching towards Lance. Lance starts shaking his shoulder, rocking his body back and forth to get some sort of response.

Lance laughs nervously, “this isn’t funny. C’mon.” Should he kick him? Kiss him? Carry him? Lance reaches up and pulls on his short hair.

“You had to fight the evil alien-magician didn’t you.” He mutters and brushes aside Keith’s hair to get a better look at his face: two purple bruises were blooming at his temples and Lance bites his lip.

Lance brings up his wrist communicator and it sparks to life in a buzz of nonsense-noise. “Allura?” He asks hopefully, “Coran, is anyone there?”

Lance tenses and he gets no reply besides the static churning out anxiety in his gut.

Lance angrily puts his hand into the air and shakes it at the heavens, “I’m suing for this!” He yells at the Gods. “Totally unfair, malpractice, complete bullshit.”

He glances back down at the communicator, about to turn it back off when he notices one of the buttons was glowing orange, “What…?” Lance reaches for it and the button pops open and a couple of screens with hand written pages unfolds, the first had a header labelled ‘Katie’s Diary.’

Lance tilts his head to the side and blinked, “what the hell Pidge?” He mutters, “Who sends their diary in the middle of the space-war? We’ll have to have talk about appropriate times to share your deepest secrets, say, not in the middle of ‘oh-fuck’ time.”

He looks back down at Keith and shakes his shoulder again, “Keith, really, who does this?” Expectedly, Keith doesn’t reply and Lance furrows his brow, “you better pull through…”

“So your friend's hurt too, huh?”

Lance jumps at the foreign voice and looks around wildly. “Who’s there?”

“Just me,” A little figure appeared from the rocks skipped down from her perch above them. “If this isn't the damnedest situation.”  
  
Lance blinks and his mouth falls open, “Uh, hi? Can I help you?”

A little creature resembled an upright snapping turtle with a oxygen mask attached to her face and crinkling eyes at the edges, she wore a raggedy dress over a nubby tail. Her pallor was the same color as the sand.

“Maybe. But I can certainly help you, ya unfortunate quiznak.”  
  
Lance tilted his head, “Quiznak?” He nods, “I accept.”  
  
She laughs like a dog barks and comes over, “I’m grandma Updah.” She looks him up and down. “And you’re one unlucky SOB.”  
  
Lance made a face, “alright. Well thanks... I’m Lance.” He frowned, “What are you doing here? You gonna help us?”  
  
The little alien approached slowly and bent down in front of him, she reached for the vial on the ground, the ‘All Cure,’ and pocketed it.

“You stole from my niece.” She said somberly, patting the medicine in her pocket.

“Oh.” Lance rubbed the back of his neck, “sorry?”

Grandma Updah gave him a hand-wave, “my niece is a little shit.”  
  
“You don’t look like her.” Lance observes shortly.

Updah shrugged, “not by blood.” Lance nods and thinks about Voltron and his friends. He got that, family not by blood.

Grandma Updah kneeled besides him and felt Lance’s pulse while staring at his patchy hands, “you’re dying.”  
  
Lance went pale and wrestled out of her little grip. “What the hell lady?”  
  
She shook her head. “Got a nasty case of ‘walk-n-wilt.”

“Y’all need different names for this.”

She looks at Keith and feels his head too, “he’ll need something as well, though you should wake ‘em up. Keep him awake too.”

Lance sat up straighter, “so you _are_ going to help us?”  
  
The old woman drew herself up to her full height, which looked about 4 foot something. “I'm an apothecary, full and licensed. You lil’thieves won’t die on my planets doorstep.”  
  
Lance stares down at Keith and then back up at her. “He’s not moving.”  
  
She nods. “Got a head injury there, some Galra shit.” She takes something off of her belt, “can’t be sleeping that one off.”  
  
She puts the sack of something under Keith’s nose and shakes it, Lance’s eyes water and he covers his own nose as he could smell the rank scent of the sack from there.

He coughs lowly for a moment, before holding his breath to see if Keith was going to do anything. _Please let him do something_ Lance swore to the heavens again.

He almost went blue in the face from going stiff and breathless, finally Keith gasps and sits bolt upright as he jerks to life. Keith’s eyes were wild and wide, his frame trembling, but he was undoubtedly _moving_.

“Keith! Buddy!” Lance grabs him from behind and drags him into a tight hug, squishing his head and shoulders into a crushing embrace. “Oh my God, oh my God.” He wipes at his eyes.

“What was that smell?!” Keith burst out in abject horror and Lance laughed like his dog just ran into a pole and walked around in circles while repeating Charlie Chaplin lines.

He laughed, his shoulders shook, and Keith complained about his head and Lance hugging him too tightly.

“You better never do that again.” Lance chastised and Keith rubbed at his temples.

“Me? You look like death.” Keith examined Lance’s hands with narrowed eyes and then touched Lance’s forehead delicately and Lance squirmed.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” He insisted and tried to hug him again just in case, Keith wiggled away with something like a splash of red on his cheeks. Lance felt like a thorn in his spirit was taken out.

“Fine? You’re dying.” Grandma Updah interjected with a bluntness to her voice.

“Who’s this?” Keith jumped and reached for his knife as he looked up and examined her suspiciously.

“Related to that lady we stole from,” Lance said excitedly, “she’ll help us.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Get on up boys.” She said, “we’ve got work to do.”

Lance sprung to his feet and Keith was slow to follow, the other boy woozily trying to stumble to his feet before falling sideways and forcing Lance to catch him.

“Whoa there.” Lance holds Keith upright as he swayed.  
  
Keith rubbed at his eyes, “do you think I could rest for a moment longer?” He said in a weak, un-Keith like voice as his eyes fluttered shut.

“No!” Upduh said as she jumped up again as well, an oxygen tank with a handle by her side. “You better not.”

Lance shook Keith and wrapped his arm around his shoulder, it was his turn to carry him, though Lance coughed and felt his insides shake, “time to walk.” He announced and started dragging a dazed Keith.

“What happened to you?” Lance whispered and Keith just shook his head with a sour look to his pursed lips.

Keith’s eyes started to close again as they walked the steep cliffs and Lance kept kicking him to keep his head up.

Lance made noise to keep Keith alert, he sang the ABC's, ABBA, Britney Spear's 'Toxic,' he repeated butchered lines of Shakespeare and even started to make loud siren noises with his mouth, along with voicing memorable little phrases from TV.

“Please don’t.” Keith said finally on the second league of their trip.

“Meow mix, meow mix,” Lance replied with a jingle.

“That will be stuck in my head for the next fifteen days.” Keith practically pouted.  
  
“I want chicken I want liver, meow mix, meow mix, please deliver.” Lance gave him his best mischievous grin and Keith looked skyward and groaned.

“How are you possibly this annoying?”  
  
“Practice...and being born a middle child.” He added the last bit thoughtfully. Lance elbows him as he supports his weight across the desert. “But you’re not passing out are you?” He winks.

“You’re the one that should be passing out,” Keith grumbles, “you talked to me about your wedding for two hours yesterday.” Keith huffs. “I’m fine compared to that.”  
  
Lance goes red in the face, “was it a good wedding?”

“You had mice as the ring bearers and pledged to swim in a chocolate fountain...and all the guests had to wear batman masks to the rehearsal.”  
  
Lance nodded and laughed brightly, “I’m awesome.”

That got a smile out of Keith who was drooping as the red sun marked their footsteps and grandma Updah ran them to the city.

Lance supported Keith’s weight as he became more heavy and Lance’s own breath came in short heaves, he could feel his temperature rising like the dawn and Updah glancing at them more often. They were not in good shape.

The city approached with it’s haphazard metal buildings and narrow streets zig-zagged with cloth strips making canopies and little walkways. Lance starts leaning on Keith just as much as the other way around.

“Do you remember a couple days ago when we were stuck on a silly kissing contest?” Keith mumbled at him with a chuckle as they entered the dusty city streets. The dim evening light eased the city into a sleepiness and hush.

Lance shook his head and blew air out of his nose. “I’ll have you know that was a legitimate and skillful game that I was ahead at.”

Keith snorts, “no you weren’t. Not even by a long shot Sanchez.”

Lance leaned over and licked Keith on the cheek in a sloppy kiss.

“Oh, dammit Lance!” Keith reached up and rubbed his cheek, “that is the worst. You licked me!”

“Look, my garbage son that eats dumpster cake, it’s a blessing to be kissed by me.”

Keith wrinkled his nose, “oh, you remember the cake part.”

“I would never forget it!” They both chuckle a little and somehow a lightness permeates the air despite long shadows and a little alien beckoning them onward.

“You’ll need a shot,” she points at Lance and then to Keith, “and he’ll need to lie down.”  
  
“Medicine! Woo.” Lance cheers and could have done a little dance, Keith’s face also lit up and his hand bunched up Lance’s shirt.

“Don’t get too excited- nothing comes for nothing. It will take months, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. Might put you in a coma,” she shrugged, “or not.”

Lance deflates, “oh, _come on_.”  
  
“Get in here.” They are ushered into a small shop with nick-nacks, strange plants and vials on shelf after shelf, it wasn’t wide, but it was a long room that smelled like rain and musk.

The ceiling was low and Updah pulled her oxygen tank along with her, “it’s not much, but you can sit in the back. And I’ll do my best for you couple of hooligans.”

Keith’s eyes followed her and grew dark, he whispered into Lance’s ear, “I don’t trust her.”

Lance frowned and knocked his knees into Keith’s, “you don’t trust anyone.”

Keith shook his head and turned back to the snapping-turtle like woman. “Why are you helping us?”

Updah shook her head, “I don’t just let people die when I see ‘em.” She said without frills or hesitation.

Lance nodded, he understood. “Keith, look man. Sometimes you just gotta accept that people are, I dunno, good.”

“Like the girl who handcuffed you to a tree?” Keith said wryly as Lance let him go and has him stand on his own (unsteadily).

“Rude.” Lance says with snort, “And that was different. I haven’t even flirted with this one!” He threw his hands in the air.

Keith’s eyebrows went up, “I suppose your flirting _does_ curse us.” Lance made an offended face, Updah puts her hands on his hips

“Are you coming into the back or not?” She points to the back of the blue carpet.

They exchange a glance, Keith shrugs and whispers, “Do we have a choice?”  
  
Lance’s brow folds into itself, “I don’t think see any other choices.” They walk into the back, Keith with his head still blooming bruises and Lance with his breath shallow and pained.

  
They walk almost shoulder to shoulder as their eyes meet and they nod at another, a promise to get through this. Get home, get help, ask Pidge why the hell she sent them her diary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 11, and wet
> 
> more of a transitional chapter, but that's okay


	12. Dear Katie...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> narrative switch up

Page 1, entry 3,

 _Anyway_ ,

_I was sitting at the breakfast table this morning eating bananas on bread when my dad comes up to me and says ‘Katie. The universe smells like almonds.’ And I’m like ‘dad, I am barely awake, you’ll have to rephrase nonsense.’ But of course, he’s already out of the room and Matt is blinking like he’s discovering the world's best crossword puzzle. Who even likes almonds? Middle aged ladies trying to get ‘protein in their diet’ that’s who. I looked it up though. The universe is filled with cyanide- I suppose it smells like almonds._

_-Katie_

Page 75, last entry, Pidge’s Diary:

_Dear Hunk, Lance, or whoever I send this to,_

_If you got this it means I am fine, fine enough to get it out to you at least. This will hopefully help you get back without leading anyone into a trap. I made it in lieu of last last time we got separated, except hopefully it’ll make this reunion less annoying, long and filled with fighting monkeys and slight drowning. Look for us._

 

Page 76, entry one,

 

_Dear Pidge, day 6_

_I decided to transcribe your diary down to figure out what ‘hidden message’ you sent us (why do you talk about Daft Punk so much?), Lance is convinced this was a poorly timed joke. I’ve decided to fill in the rest of the pages of this book for something to do. It’s day 6, Grandma Updah has put us up in the back of her shop what feels like a 5 by 5 room. It’s awful and Lance needs a shower- I know he needs a shower because he is a foot away. He. Is. Always. A. Foot. Away. It’s going about as well as you would imagine, I’ve hit my head on the doorframe twice and Lance keeps bringing it up. This is my last will and testament if we kill each other: you still can’t have my jacket, get your own._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, day 8_

_We need to work. Or at least I need to work, Lance finally took his first shot of medicine and I haven’t seen him all day, I’m not allowed in the back right now. (Would you call me a loser for being worried? I’m worried. You’d still me a loser though.) Moaning is good though, it means he’s alive, ie he’s moaning._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, day 9,_

_I slept on the floor of the shop tonight, my head still hurts and I’ve been having some dreams I don’t want to talk about. Anyway, instead I’ve been reading your diary over and over, except the numbers don’t make quadrants, the words aren’t anagrams, none of the places you mention are close by. What are you getting at Pidge? Where are you? Why do I now know so much about periods (go to the doctor if your flow is that heavy idiot)._

_We sleep 6 hours a night since the planets days are 12 hours in total, and I think it’s getting to me. But Lance is sleeping all the time now, he isn’t getting up much. Fuck._

_-Keith_  

_Dear Pidge, day 9,_

_Don’t tell Shiro I wrote fuck in your diary._

 

_Dear Pidge, day 11,_

_It turns out the only way to get a job on this god forsaken planet is join one of the ‘guilds’ which usually just translates to ‘gangs’ when people say it. They hand out work permits and I can’t officially do anything for Grandma Updah until I get one of those. I am pretty bored and there’s a sword market on this planet. Whole street, just swords (don’t make that face Pidge, I know). Updah feeds us, but I think we’re going to need money to get fare off this orange planet. Anyway, I’ll look into the whole ‘joining a space gang’ thing._

_Lance update- he’s only been awake once in the last 24 hours, he mumbled about his dog ‘Hubert’ and then puked up the medicine we gave him. I don’t think he has a dog named Hubert._

_-Keith_

_ps. I...won’t come home without Lance. I promise._

 

_Dear Pidge, day 15,_

_I am still tired, it turns out six hours of sleep is hard to get used to. I think I’m getting used to the smell though, and even the noise, finally. Living alone is a lot different than a city with ten different types of aliens every other street, it has pretty steep curfew restrictions, but it doesn’t stop the Viv from screeching in the middle of the night, or the Smoowe from literally laying eggs in our vents and having them hatch (note: I hate our neighbors). Lance would like it, they look like lizards with huge eyes and apparently lay eggs every 2 weeks. You’d like that too. Anyway, Lance update- I’ve taken to watching him around the clock. Space gang update- no news, Updah isn’t very helpful. Her nickname for me is ‘shitty-thief’ and ‘damned oxygen breather.’ It turns out she has to have a nitrogen dispenser to breath properly, it’s weird. You’d like it._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 17_

_Nothing is real here, Goddamn, not the air or the weather or hell even the light is filtered. Some old bag talked to me for an hour today in the shop about how ‘they should just let the water boil into space like it did back in my day.’ I don’t know what any of these people are talking about. An android tried to hit on me, I asked for its schematics (I thought you'd like them), and it blushed and gave me some the next day in an envelope with a heart on it. I think I accidentally bought robot porn._

_-Keith, I’ll deny this if you try to blackmail me_

 

_Dear Pidge, day 20,_

_Got knocked out by someone the size of a toddler today. Don’t steal oranges, don’t steal medicine, it turns out I really am a shit thief like Updah says. Anyway, I’m going to go lie down. Also, why didn’t you leave us a better key to figure your diary out? We aren’t all 14 year old geniuses._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 22,_

_He’s awake! And not that drowsy awake where he talks about his mom for half an hour and then doesn't remember her eye color and starts crying. That sucked. Anyway, I freaked out for ten minutes when he wasn’t in the backroom, sleeping off the illness and then Updah pointed outside. He was there. Standing in the rain, looking happier than I thought people could look in this place. I ran outside to tell him to not get soaking wet with a death wish. He just grabbed me and started spinning me around, I’d call it dancing if that boy had an ounce of rhythm in him. Anyway he found at least two puddles and started splashing in them and talking about how much better he felt. I may have splashed in one. Or two. Lance just has that effect, okay? It rained for hours, gotta hand it to them Pidge, the rain is fake, but they know how to do it._

_He sang something like ‘Singing in the Rain’ and then chased me down to help him reach the high note. I didn’t help and there was more splashing._

_We went inside when he started to hack again, then he made a shitty pun and I had to leave the room. We changed out, everything I own is brown currently, no it’s not cool, yes, only Lance seems to be pulling it off. You can have my jacket later now I guess._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 24_

_Fuck, fuck, why did I let him go into the rain? Am I just asking for this kind of thing? Why doesn’t he stop coughing?? What did we do, fuck, no wonder this thing killed all the Alteans. I wish Hunk was here, God Lance looks scared, I don’t know what to tell him besides ‘don’t die buddy.’ Who says that? Me, Keith, the loser. God I’m going to get him more water._

_-An asshole_

 

_Dear Pidge, day 30_

_Why isn’t he coughing more? He just lies there with his eyes rolled back in his head. I sleep on his chest to listen for that goddamn heartbeat, waiting to see if I need to jab adrenaline into it or something. I was a pilot, not a doctor and here I am learning how to make throat lozenges out of leaf paste._

_I’ve been busy. Updah is very serious about doing her best work. I got contacted by the Dellra, I even told one ‘not now’ and they grabbed my throat and told me I can’t keep working for Updah without a permit. So now that’s happening (I guess)._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, day 33_

_This is one hell of a vacation, by the way, what do you mean when say ‘I wish the garrison had more soap dispensers?’ What does that mean Pidge? Why do you say the word 3 every page of so? 3rd quadrant, 3rd galaxy? We need some more direction here Pidge! Some of us are dying._

_-Keith_

_PS I didn’t need to know about your deodorant problems, that was 3 pages waxing poetic about Old Spice. Honestly?_

_PSS okay, I’m sorry, doing laundry that much did sound annoying. But please, make your personal secret's more helpful to saving lives next time?_

_PSS Lance is getting worse._

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 38_

_I’m not going to cry over Lance. I’m not going to cry over Lance Sanchez. He’s still breathing, Updah says he’s still breathing, yes, he's rasping and unresponsive, but he's still breathing. Oh God, oh god._  

_Dear Pidge, Day 38,_

_~~Okay, I cried for a couple hours, but that’s a thing people do. I hope. Probably.~~ _  

_Dear Pidge, Day 38,_

_Okay, I’m good, I’m good, alone in the middle of a city without an airship, but I’m good again. I’m going to go listen to Lance’s heart beat._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 40,_

_Met some sort of fairy-person, they had wings and could fly and they told me to meet them behind a dumpster on F street. I know, don’t go to the back alley with a sparkly stranger Keith, I’m not Lance, I know. But I think they’re Dellra, it seems like it. Wish me luck on my first day of ‘joining a gang.’ ...Lance is doing okay._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 41,_

_I’m not even going to describe you the night I just had. Let’s just say everything hurts, particularly my ribs and mouth. I probably won’t be able to eat for a few days. But I got my work permit and my life is officially weirder than I thought it could be. If we ever get home to earth, which I don’t really care for to be honest, I’m pretty sure no one is going to relate to having to getting the insignia of a turtle on their tongue. Oh well, whatever, I’m going to buy Lance a camera when I get paid- he talked about taking selfies with half the citizens we run into before he got worse._

_Grandma Updah is not happy about having to pay me (I told her to fight me). But I get a bike now, so that’s decent._

_-Keith_

 

_Katie, Day 45_

_Did you know I don’t know how to ride a bike? Anyway, Lance may finally be feeling better, since he made fun of me for at least an hour when I tried to mount the thing. Who made bikes? Why are they harder to ride then they look? If you or Hunk were here you’d build something better than a Goddamn bike. Bikes are stupid._

_Anyway, Lance helped me back on it, I told him not to and to go rest, but he insisted on ‘laughter being the best medicine.’ Haha. I’m the joke- real funny Lance. You once wrote in here: ‘Lance and Keith are cheek kissing again. Gay.’ With a thumbs up symbol. Well, look, it’s kind of like that, ‘cause he put his hands on my hips like a fool and pushed me along on the bike until letting go...I fell over again. It was his fault._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 50,_

_Biking isn’t that hard. Sort of. I just deliver medicine to the different houses so people are at least happy to see me. Lance keeps whining that he wants to do that, but I tell him ‘too bad’ because he was passed out when I straight up swallowed twelve larvae to join the Dellra (don’t ask). He seems...well, I don’t want to get my hopes up._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 55,_

_We’re running out of pages here, so I’ll keep it brief. I still have no idea why you sent us your diary, it stopped me from losing my mind from boredom and...other stuff. But I still can’t put any patterns together, Lance says it’s rude to read someone else’s diary 55 times, I tell him to shut up. He stopped coughing, I think we’ll take a walk tomorrow._

_-Keith_

 

_Dear Pidge, Day 60._

_His fever broke. It was night time in our tiny room with no air conditioning and Updah took his temperature, it was normal, it was all normal. I hugged her, she’s not the type you should actually hug, but she became very cuddly for a moment (then she whacked me). She just snorted and said ‘never say I can’t do the impossible.’ And left. Of course Lance just says ‘what did you expect?’ Then he flexed or some shit. We’ll make some money and get out of here soon. Don’t you guys do too much without us, and buy some better deodorant, God, Old Spice is overrated._

_-Thanks Pidge, Keith_


	13. The Art of Letting Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> decided the story was moving too fast and rewrote this chapter :)

Lance sat on the doorway of the apothecary with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, his shivers were gone, but he couldn’t help but be careful- he still remembered when his lungs almost gave out a couple weeks ago.

Updah sat next to him and mashed up some sort of grey worms while murmuring to herself in a low tone. “They want it by half past sunrise, oh sure, I can get them at half past sunrise, of course. _Pissants_.”

Lance chuckles at the grumpy alien and looked over to the street.

“You’re supposed to stay on the bike Keith!” Lance called out with relish.

Keith glanced at him, he was trying to perch on a light brown bike with a little headlamp and back and front basket for packages.

Keith was still falling sideways on it.

“Don’t even start with me blue-boy.” Keith lifts himself once more onto a pedal and Lance watches carefully as his weight capsizes the instrument back to earth.

Lance snickers, “good job Keith.” He bit his lip, “weren’t you the one who saved Shiro on that glider thing like, a couple months ago? What happened?”

Keith’s cheeks heat up, “that was different.” He snapped, “I’m a pilot-”

“Not a doctor, dammit Kirk?” Lance offered sardonically and Keith sniffed moodily.

“You’re not helping,” he grumbled, “and I almost have this down. It’s always just getting started that’s the problem.”

Lance coughed lightly and stood up, “I would say you’re overthinking things, but I’ve never seen you overthink something before you do it.”

“That is not true.” Keith’s eyes were focused on his handle bars.

“What? You got a tongue ring when I was in a coma. That’s like, classic, impulse control in crisis.” Lance put his blanket down and Updah eyed him sharply as he moves around.

His fever was gone, but he’d still be on the medicine for two weeks or so- out of the woods was just a figure of speech for little girls who happened to escape wolves.

“I told you, that was for getting a work permit.” Keith hopped up back on the pedal’s and cursed when he was dragged to the left and had to steady himself.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s not really an insult. I’m kinda impressed with you, and annoyed, you fought the Gallra King without even thinking about it. And ate that weird meat on Gessai. And got a tongue ring.”

  
“Um, thanks?” Keith blinked a couple times.

“But you still can’t ride a bike!” Lance hooted and came over to him, “come on, I taught both my little sister and brother how to do this.”

“No, nope, no,” Keith weakly moved away, “I remember the last time you tried to help.” Keith scowled, “I fell.”

“That was your own fault! And part of the process, didn’t anyone tell you that you have to fall down a couple times to ride a bike? Or make a cake or something.” Lance scratched his chin and Keith’s eyes softly met his.

He nodded stiffly in affirmation and Lance lit up, “I’m gonna support you while you stand still, and then run alongside it, and you’ll pedal.”

“I’m not a little kid.” Keith hunches his shoulders over.

“Don’t be stubborn Keithikin, you can do it.” He made a kissy face and Keith gloomily scrunched his face up in distaste.

It was early in the morning, so the streets were emptier than they usually were, a few early-risers appear from their airships and houses to inspect the tables and throw their money around.

Lance waited until there was opening down the road to get Keith started.

“Alright, mount!”

“You don’t have to tell me what to do,” Keith huffs, but Lance’s hands were already on his waist and nudging him up and out, Keith ascends to the seat reluctantly.

They glance at each other with Lance’s hands on his middle and even Lance feels the tentative electricity between them. Keith starts leaning left and Lance has to steady his weight and keep him upright.

“Pedal!” He calls and Keith doesn’t protest this time, Lance runs after him as he steadies his weight, sniffling a little and laughing when Keith’s eyes widen with a measured delight.

Lance keeps him upright and runs down the street, it felt good to stretch his legs and be less than a lump on the bed

Lance guided him onto the next street and then called into his ear, “I’m gonna let go! Keep pedaling.”

  
“What?” Lance lets go and Keith veers down the rocky surface, too fast, but Lance had some faith in him.

Keith’s handlebars shook right and then left and Lance runs after him just in case, but Keith gets a handle on it and starts pedaling like he’s being chased.

“Oh my God, you’re gonna crash again!” Keith didn’t seem to hear him and stood up on his bike, an obvious satisfaction playing across his features. Smiling eyes and hair blowing back behind him.

Lance whoops and pumps his fist in the air, “what did I tell you! As easy as getting robot porn on this planet.”

Keith laughs and turns around to come back Lance puts his hands up, “now here’s the lesson in breaking. Break!” He yells before Keith can slam into him.

Keith hits the handle bar brakes and the bikes wheels jerk back and forth before Lance tells him to stay center and come to a stop. Keith somehow doesn’t make a three lane pile up and comes out in a ball of energy and his chest puffed out.

“That wasn’t hard.” He says discreetly.

“Good job man,” Lance smiles and puts up his hand, “high-five.” He hints to Keith who eventually raises his hand and Lance slaps it, causing the satisfying smack that rung through the air.

They both bounce around and Keith is holding his bike with a newfound fondness.

“Alright, stage two.” Lance holds up two fingers.

Keith blinks, “isn’t that all there is to it?” He looked concerned, but Lance shook his head.

“You may have totally got this bike unfairly-”

“I got my tongue pierced! With a frog insignia with it! And larvae-” Keith says indignantly.

“Alright, alright, you’re a badass.” Lance took a deep breath, and Keith seemed to chew over statement with a lick of red across his nose. “But it’s time to help your weak and sickly friend.”

  
Keith tilts his head and Lance has Keith practice riding the bike with extra weight- ie him.

“Come on, here comes the fun part,” Lance excitedly takes Keith across town to what they had discovered was the wealthy section. It was basically empty and disconcertingly trash-free.

Lance hmms and examines each new street with his hand on his chin.

“What...are you looking for?” Keith asks haltingly and Lance continues to goad them on further until the full length of the sunrise comes into view.

“Haha!” Lance wipes his nose on his sleeve, but still feels bright and clean inside. “Here it is.”

“A hill?” Keith looked down, then his eyes narrow with confusion.

Lance laughed and pushed Keith to his bike, “now it’s time to fully restore your childhood to you and find the best part of biking altogether.”

Keith’s eyes went wide with dawning realization, “and what if we fall? Think this through.”

Lance winked and flexed his arms, “I’ll catch us.”

Keith shook his head, “you’re been bedridden for two months-”

“I’ll catch you! Have some faith.” He picked the bike up and positioned it on the paved sidewalk.

Keith put his hair back into a tiny bun at the nape of his neck, “are we really doing this?”

“Hell yes.”

Keith reluctantly gets on the bike and Lance hops on to the handlebars to distribute his weight and perch somewhat comfortably on it.

Keith blows air out his nose, “you have a lot of faith in me.”

“Of course!” Lance tries to get him to start, “if we don’t like, trust your friends then...” He trails off as their eyes meet butterfly-soft in the early light, Keith looked bemused, but hops onto the seat after him.

“If we die,” Keith grumbles, “tell Pidge I change my mind. She still can’t actually have my jacket.”

“Huh?”

  
“Here we go.” Keit kicked off and Lance leaned forward.

“Steady your feet and let go of the breaks,” Lance instructs as they start off right before the downward descent.

The bike tips forward, “woooo-hoo-hoo!” Lance whoops as they careen down into the barely sun soaked streets of the dawn.

Pavement rocks the bike, but they stay upright as Lance throws his head back and lets the wind blow through him and jacket flap in the breeze. He lets go and puts his arms out wide.

They sail down the hill, too fast, wild. “Ah!” Lance keeps calling and looks behind his shoulder, “Keith, Keith,-”

He tries to say, but Keith’s face was still and in awe, stuck in a smile like swing sets and bruised knees in all the good ways.

Lance’s breath catches in his throat and he holds on harder, Keith’s eyes close in reverence and he stood up on the pedals and seemed to be taken away by the thrill of it, Lance can't look away.

They run into a bush.

Apparently Keith closing his eyes and Lance staring at Keith was not a good combination, the wheels meet the foliage and they are both thrown into the green underbrush.

“Oof,” Lance is the first one to fall forward and Keith runs into his back afterwards with a hard thunk- they’d both be bruised by that. The the bike clatters to the sidewalk in front of them.

"Ow." Keith struggled in the bushes over him and Lance wrestles him forward, “told you I’d catch you.”

Keith snorts, “with your back, sure.”

“Still counts!” They help each other up and Keith examines the cut on Lance’s cheek and bruised knee, Lance pushes Keith’s hair aside to get a look at his forward.

Keith hums and looks him up and down, “You look…” He frowns. “Okayish.”

“Oh man,” Lance opens his arms wide, “that was transcendental. Tell me that wasn’t like, spiritual Keith, total soul leaving the body. Best bike ride, Lance knows what he’s talking about.”

  
Keith starts dragging them home on foot, carrying his bike alongside him, “it was...okay.” He says slowly.

“Keith, buddy.”

Keith glances over with a smile, “it was good. Really good.” They walk in tandem back to the shop with an excitement buzzing between them like newborn rabbits.

Lance feels washed and warm inside.


	14. I Love Lucy

Keith was basically asleep with the sunset when he heard the whirring of wheels on the street and a boisterous voice calling out to him.

“I Love Lucy!” Keith blinked and rubbed at one of his eyes, he looked up blurrily from the couch they had dragged out in front of the shop (it was a long story.) “I love lucy! I love lucy!”

Keith watched Lance skid to a halt on the bike in front of him, he was breathless, his chest was heaving up and down, face cracked in half with a huge smile.

“Uh, good?” Keith says warily, “did she give into that parrot pick-up line you use? Or is this one of the ones you spot at the supermarket and never actually talked to?”  
  
Lance shook his head and wiped his face, “shut up. Shut up and get in the vehicle.”  
  
Keith sighed, “I don’t want to play wingman. We already went over this, you even said I was terrible at it and then we were thrown out of the ammonia bar- which still wasn’t my fault by the way.”  
  
“Keith,” Lance took a sharp intake of breath, “I will come over and drag you onto this bike.”  
  
“What do you even-”  
  
“I’ll explain on the way! Just,” Lance was bouncing up and down on the bike, “trust me man.” His voice was melting-icecream soft and Keith felt his fingers twitch.

He breathes out heavily, “I’m going to regret this.” He hops onto the front handle bars of the bike- not his favorite activity and they take off.

“Not a chance.” Lance reassured and started pedaling, “in fact I don’t think I’ve been so excited about something since my mama accidentally put my name on both mine and my little brothers Christmas presents one year.”

Keith snorted, “are we celebrating Christmas then?” He asked curiously, “with, um, a Lucy?”  
  
“Keith you’re an idiot, or have been living under a rock, but I already knew that.” Lance kept pedaling and they streaked down the emptying streets and up a small hill that Lance wheezed at.

Keith frowned and considered sending them off balance, “wow. Thanks. I’m so excited for this now.”

“When’s the last time we’ve seen another human?” Lance asks as his eyes glittered and stayed focused on Keith's.

“I see _you._ Everyday, in that tiny room, also hear you, and smell you. It’s really quite the experience.” He says dryly.

“Keith, will you just, _bite me_. You’re gonna love this.” They make it down the next road and Keith was becoming more curious.

“Okay, you got me. What is it? Besides like, a romance novel you bought you tried to recreate with a ‘Lucy.’”  
  
“Trust me. Love Among the Askikeens is nothing like this. Yet.” Lance smirked and they started to slow in front of a long line with several posters hanging up. “Radio signals!” He called out.

“What?” Keith examined the lines and wall that protected an open field,  Keith hopped down to the ground and wondered a little closer, “a screen.” A screen was placed in the open courtyard closer to the center of the city.  
  
“Yeah! I just found out about this. They pick up signals from space! And put them on a projector!” Lance followed him and shook Keith’s shoulder close to violently, “it’s the movies dude!”  
  
Keith huffed a smile, “I’ll be damned.”  
  
“Come on. We have to get in there, I would fellate so much alien ass to get a seat.” Lance secures the bike to the nearest pole.

“You would do that for aliens for free-”  
  
“Come on,” Lance whined and drags them into the growing crowd by the wrist, Keith told himself that his warm fingers were just hands. That they had just spent too much time together.

“Anyway, then I was talking to this Viv, who was all like ‘look at all these events coming out!’ and I was like, well ‘if you want to come out baby…-”  
  
“Lance what does that even mean?” Keith asks curiously as they slowly make their way in between the doors to the field.

“Not my best line, but then they showed me this poster! And they picked us up Keith, they totally got us.” Lance says breathlessly and his smile was close to infectious, Keith grinned at the ground.

He puts his hands in his pockets, “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad to see something familiar.”

“Not bad!” Lance shakes his shoulder again. “Lucy! Instead of like, an infomercial of a workout machine or bad 1970s porn, this will be great.”  
  
“I’ve never even seen this show.” Keith says blankly and Lance wraps his long arm around his shoulder and pulls him closer.

“Me neither.” Keith shakes his head and they are practically shoved into the next courtyard. “It will be great.”

“Hey,” Keith says gently as they wander around the large yard in front of a screen, “green.” It was a hovering statement, that floated and fell.

There was little tufts of what appeared to be grass sprouting up from the ground and Keith brushed his fingers through it, “let’s sit here.” He drags Lance over and shows him the first growing thing in the ground they’d seen in months.

Lance nodded and they sit next to the grass and Keith's chest inflates like a balloon, he closes his eyes.

Lance puts his jacket down and tells him excitedly about going to outdoor movies when he moved to Austin to try to get into the garrison.

“I mean, obviously, it was makeout city and rained out a couple times.” Lance says thoughtfully as they lounged on the ground waiting in the dark for the screen to flicker to life.

Keith glanced at him and pressed his palms to the grass again, “doesn’t sound bad.”  
  
Lance clapped him the back, “when’s the last time we took a break anyway? It’s always 'help Updah', deliver that thing, pick up trash to sell to the street master.” Lance listed off and Keith reclined downward to watch his face glow and move in fast patterns of delight.

“How is the trash business going?” Keith asks casually as they wait.

“Lets just say, I did _not_ in fact join a team of magically robot lions that save the universe to become a garbage man,” he sighs, “but it pays.”  
  
“And you don’t need a permit,” he says casually. Picking up trash was one of the few jobs the planet needed enough that it didn’t have to go by their strict rules on guilds. It mostly thanks to the fact the government was so weak it didn’t just pick it up itself.

Lance chuckled and said lowly, “my parents always had me get summer jobs. It’s like that, except terrible and the cute girls have two heads and the boys have lizard tongues and they all throw trash at you.”  
  
Keith shrugs, “these things happen.” Keith picked at his nails and then glanced back at Lance.  
  
Lance snickers and rolls over to face him, “it could be worse.” He slugged him in the shoulder, “we could have had to do this alone.” Keith inhales, then sighs, opening his mouth to say something, but Lance was already onto the next thing. He called over to a frog-like little creature giving out something from a basket.

Keith leaned back onto Lance, “you could be dead.” He added somberly, but Lance wasn’t listening.

“Flowers!” He says fever-high glee and buys a handful from the frog-person, most of which other creatures seemed to be eating.

Keith chuckled, “alright, flowerman-”  
  
“Flowers!” Lance sat cross-legged next to him, “these are prime almost-earth material.” His diligent fingers started to weave them together and Keith was about to ask about it when the screen flickered to life.

The crowd in the courtyard erupted in cheers and Keith settled down.

The first movies were not from earth- bad television signals that played scrambled romances to horrors in indescribable images that Keith could either guess were either bad art films or else home cooking videos no one understood.

He was telling Lance as much when he felt something loosely placed on top of his head, and Keith felt it slowly. It was a ring of flowers.

Keith blinked, “you made me a flower crown?”  
  
Lance shrugged, “I used to make them at school for the girls who gave me their pudding at lunch.”  
  
“That’s very specific.”  
  
“I was good at it.” He defends and Keith felt the little crown of flowers again and readjusted his weight on his elbows. “Thanks, I mean, yeah.” He mumbles in a hurry and Lance flicked him in the ear with a smile.

"Hey," he swats at him.

"Don't worry." Lance readjusts his flower crown, "it brings out your eyes."  
  
"Haha." Something explodes on screen and they turn back to it.

Keith starts to yawn and tries to blurrily watch some sort of blob be dissolved in an acid vat- someone gasped and Keith assumed this was the horror part.

He jumps when he feels a pair of long fingers poke at the ends of his hair. He glances around where Lance was positioned behind him.

“What?” He finally asks as Lance tugs at the ends of his bangs.

“You’re hair is almost as long as my sisters.” He describes with a smirk.

Keith shook his head, “not all of us care, or trust alien barbers as much as you.” Lance pushed Keith up and started tugging at the ends of the hair again.

“What-”  
  
“Sshh, I’m helping.” It was what Keith liked to call the ‘different’ Lance voice- not arrogant or flirty or trying to make something out of itself.

He untangled Keith’s hair from behind him, and Keith held his breath and tried not to squirm, the blobs on screen run away from a tidal wave erupting from a volcano. Keith shivers.

Lance hums something and starts arranging Keith’s hair, gently and diligently, Keith still isn’t sure how to breathe.

What felt like half of Zanzabar sat around them late into the night as the screen dazzled in front of them, and Keith felt Lance untangling and looping his hair around.

Keith wanted to say something- but also, he really didn’t. He just let him weave the strands into something.

His eyes are almost drooping closed as finally, they hear something familiar: a jaunty tune from the 1950s that was indescribably human. Fun. Good.

Keith sat up straight and was smiling, and he didn’t know this was something that he wanted to see. He wanted to see it.

A blonde with her hair tied up, Lucille Ball, comes on the show and Keith is laughing before he even knows it.

“That’s why they call ‘em tellers. They always go around blabbing.” She says with her wide doll-eyes, and Keith was snickering into his hands and Lance was laughing boisterously besides him, without restraint or a single hard line around his eyes.

The episode plays, some of the other lifeforms even start to join in and Keith tries to rationalize why he’s having a good time. He was tired. He was almost homesick. Lance was still playing with his hair and Lucy was trying to eat ten chocolates at once.

He had to wipe at his eyes by the time the conveyor belt scene ends and he’s holding his sides.

“I told this was worth it! I told you!” Lance hoots and wraps another arm around Keith and holds on.

Keith snickers and leans into him, breathing in his tangible excitement. The show ends and they clap louder than necessary. “Home.” Lance mouths in the noise and Keith wished he held on longer.

Keith settles back down and starts collecting their jackets from the ground.

“Wait,” Lance tugs on his sleeve and Keith glances over. “It’s, I mean. There’s more.”  
  
Keith makes a face, “they’re going to play more alien artpop.”  
  
Lance shakes his head, “come on, let's take the whole night off.”  
  
Keith was sitting back down despite himself, “we have work. I’m tired. It’s late.”  
  
Lance sticks his bottom lip out and Keith already knows he’s not going anywhere. “Maybe we’ll learn something useful.” He offers and Keith was already reclining again.

Lance works his hands into his hair once more, undoing the braid and starting over, Keith closes his eyes and tells himself that he can enjoy this, he was allowed to, just for now.

The next film is mostly lights and colors, no sound and Keith hovers on the edges of consciousness. He yawns.

“How are we going to get off this planet Lance?” He asks somberly to the night air, “Allura. Shiro. Hunk. Pidge...Coran. We don’t know how any of them are.”  
  
Lance absently tucks Keith’s hair behind his ear and starts pulling it all together again. “They're fine, they have the healing pods. And...We’ll follow Pidge’s diary.”  
  
“Oh right, after months of me reading that thing, it will reveal itself.”  
  
Lance’s fingers flow down and they both try to watch the saturated screen. “I wasn’t gonna tell you… but I think it’s our names.”  
  
“Our what?”  
  
“Look. If I figure it out, I’ll tell you. We just need to think about it differently. And get airship tickets. And not caught by the Gallra...And then save the galaxy and stuff.”  
  
Keith sighs, “and stuff.”  
  
“Now come on, you’ll be the prettiest guy at the ball, let me finish.” Lance hums as he works for what feels like he’s just doing and then redoing it as Keith gives into the busy attention to his scalp.

The next film is all dark angles and quiet whispers followed by shouting. Keith’s eyes start to flutter shut and Lance’s humming doesn’t help.

He closes his eyes and the world morphs into a very steady darkness.

\----------

He opens his eyes again with his head positioned slightly up on a soft surface and cracks of light intruding on his vision.

He reaches up and finds someone's hip, he jumps to up and discovers that his head at been in one very annoying boys lap.

Lance snickers at him, “the movie's are over.” He says simply and Keith looks away to hide any red on his cheeks.

“Oh.” Keith feels the back of his head, “Dude.” He feels flowers weaved into little braids on his head, “What is this?”  
  
“Art.” Lance helps him up as they stand in the empty courtyard.

Keith tilted his head, “you didn’t have to stay. You could have woken me up.”  
  
Lance shrugs and puts his hands behind his head as he looks up at the sky, “our room doesn’t even have windows.” He breathes in slowly and points, “it’s nice.”

Keith looks up and a painted vision of a galaxy opened up above them: glittering, layered and vast. Keith huffed and smiled, “come on star boy. We have at least, maybe an hour, before work.”  
  
Lance slugs him in the shoulder and they teeter back into the night streets. They move in time as the decide to walk the bike home on foot.

Lance chattered about the cool movies and I Love Lucy and how lucky they were that this existed and Keith smiles back and feels his twined hair.

He kind of wished they were still playing the kissing game, but he tells himself that they had just spent too much time together.


	15. Misadventures in Fight and Falling

Lance came barreling around the corner, trash bag in one hand and flyer in the other.

“Heeeey,” he waved it in the air at the shop as Updah cleaned the store front.

She nods at him, “youngin’.”  
  
“Olden.” He nods back and she snorts.

“Is Keith in?” He asks breathlessly, she nods her head towards the shop. “Keeeith.” He calls and the boy emerges from the shop with a book in his hand.

“Lance,” he blinks, “I was looking for you, I think you might be onto something with the names- Pidge uses our names at random points sometimes and they are always in the same order.”  
  
“Okay, cool, but we need money before we can actually go anywhere. Look at this thing.” He flings the flyer in his face.

  
Keith raises an eyebrow and takes a flyer, “come shake your ass for the 112th Munphin day club-”  
  
“Wait, wait, down below that, and right before the Queen’s Entertainment thing.” He points ecstatically and Keith’s eyes trail down.

 

“The Viv Show of Strength tournament?” He asks- it did kind of translate strangely as Lance parsed out the letters in the ‘common’ language the whole planet used as a standard.

“Yeah!” Lance pumps his fist in the air, “money rewards. Credits. If we win, I bet that’d be enough to get passage- get a ship!”

 

Keith shakes his head, “go where?”  
  
“You’ll figure it out.” Lance reaches down and retrieves the small book Keith had transcribed Pidge’s words onto, “or I will! It can’t be that hard- Pidge meant for Hunk or me to crack it, honestly she wouldn’t make it that complicated.”

 

Lance scanned the first few pages again while Keith took a look at the flyer.

“This seems-”  
  
Lance turns on him quickly, “awesome? Fun? A great idea Lance?”  
  
Keith frowned. “Unnecessary. We could lose, make it a waste of time.”  
  
Lance claps him on the back, “yeah. Okay. But consider this: we could win. And get money, boy one of those flamethrower swords you like.”  
  
Keith’s pupils expanded a little- that prospect appealed to him, he then shook his head. “The Viv. The bird-people, they don’t like outsiders….I don’t like them.”  
  
Lance made a face, “we don’t know them! They do this like every year, anyone can join, and our human wiles will see us through.”  
  
Keith folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know.”  
  
Lance threw his hands in the air. “Too late. I already signed us up.” He crowed and backed up a few steps out of the ‘attack range’ of Keith’s reach.

 

Keith drooped and he side-eyed him moresly, “of course you did.”  
  
“It will be fun.” He asserts and walks around in circles, “and I’ll win.”  
  
“It’s a team event. The Viv do everything in pairs.” The Viv were a ‘twin’ species that were born with a sibling they spend their entirety of their life around. As the closest race to Zanzabar they controlled ⅓ of the planet with sheer numbers.

 

Of course, they also held their odd festivals, that had awards nonetheless. Plus, Lance sort of wanted non-work related things to do (with Keith). There was only so much garbage one man could pick up.

 

“Two days!” He whoops, “get pumped.”

 

\--------------------------

Lance had no real ideas about what a day of Viv contests entailed but he forced both him and Keith awake before dawn and walk them to the main room.

 

“Do you have any tips Updah?” Lance asks to pry information out of the little women.

 

She glances up with him with her little wrinkled eyes, “be good.” She snorts, “but you won’t win.”  
  
Lance spoons mush into his mouth and frowns, “Thanks Updah.” he says flatly. “You are always a beam of support.”  
  
Her little slits of eyes dart towards him. “Damn straight. Any winnings you get will pay for room board.”  
  
“You don’t even charge like half your patients Updah.” He whines pointedly and Updah shrugs. “And suddenly charge us?” She seemed nonplussed.

 

“Speed, strength and endurance. That’s how they do it,” she says sagely, “be good.”  
  
They agree to be ‘be good’ whatever that meant and Lance worries a little about the fact he lost a lot of muscle mass (and weight) during the whole ‘deathly ill’ ordeal. He bit his lip and shoved more food into his mouth.

 

Keith tried to read Pidge’s diary over their grey porridge, which was one of more decent things they could find they could eat- from a very disturbing trial and error process.

 

“Is this the part where she has some sort of cheese-related romantic experience.”  
  
Keith’s head jerks to the side, “it’s brie. Everyone likes brie.”  
  
Lance laughs lowly and finishes up, “Sure.”

 

Lance’s heart sped up like a poorly animated Speed Racer episode as Keith put his hand on Lance’s knee and leaned in,  “are you sure you’ll be fine? It’s only been a week or so.”  
  
Lance made a face, “a week and half! And I’ll be fine, Sanchez’s are known for our gumption.”  
  
Keith makes a little noise that might have been a laugh, “well if you’re anything to go...I’m sure.”  
  
These little moments were becoming more frequent and lay somewhere between incomprehensible to ‘get some already Lance you little league last batter.’

 

Keith smiled with a storm cloud under it, “if you win.”

 

Lance makes an indignant noise and tries to drag Keith to his feet anyway, “I resent my absolute

baller skills being questioned. It’s on Keith, we’re doing this- and imma beat you.”  
  
“It’s a team event.” Keith iterates in his ‘I’m mystified by the world’ voice.

 

They make it to the front door and wave off their landlady and their sponsor Updah the irritated.

 

“You ain’t gonna win, but good luck ya’ chupniks...I’m rooting for you.” She continued turning some sort of leaf into a powder, “And watch out for the curfew!”

 

Lance absently says bye again, thanking her and running into the barely busy street.

_Laps_

They make their way to the Viv’s part of the city: whimsical buildings that towered over the rest of the city in swirling colors and the constant threat of falling over. They walk on foot, Lance was giddy with anticipation, he attempted to draw Keith’s attention to him.

 

“Tell me now if you got any freaky Gallra powers up your sleeve,” he says probingly and Keith’s face falls into itself, and Lance’s chest squeezes. It was the wrong thing to say.

 

“No.” He grunts. “I don’t.” He wasn’t meeting Lance’s gaze and Lance tries to think of something intelligent and distracting to say.

 

“Oh shit, whadup, there it is.” He says instead, which one out of two wasn’t bad.

It was a decent sized gathering of various aliens, mostly Viv, who were surrounding what looked like a starting line with multitudes of flags surrounding a line in the dirt.

Someone squawks at Lance and Lance jumps and edges away, putting Keith between himself and the bird-like people.

The Viv were a bright yellow race with spikey wings they used to hover, but it didn’t look like they could actually fly. They had twig-like beige arms and even more twiggy legs under pairs of ratty shorts they all seemed to wear, sometimes bedazzled like a five year old’s colorful fantasy.

Lance draws Keith close in the crowd.

“Here we go, right.” Lance bounced on his heels and tries to push his excitement on the doused spirits of Keith.

Keith’s eyes surveyed the surrounding landscape, “look out for any Gallra.” He growls, “who knows when they’ll come around again.”  
  
Lance jumped up and grabbed onto Keith’s shoulders, he gave a very disjointed massage, “relax. Relaaax. They left us to die last time, they ain’t lookin’ for us- we need this anyway.”

 

Keith didn’t seem convinced and turned around to face the starting line, “it looks like they’re getting ready.”

 

Several of the competitors were pairing up and jumping up on each others backs, perching on their shoulders and many unfurling their wings and looking sharp.

 

“Keith!” Lance barks. “Get on my back.”  
  
Keith wrinkled his nose, “really?”  
  
“Ride or die my Fingerless Gloves sir.” Lance bent over, “ride or die!”

 

Keith looks like he’s debating pushing Lance into a river. He hesitantly got in piggy-back position instead, halfway through a shrill squawk comes from the sidelines and the racers are off.

Lance bumps Keith more firmly on his back and takes off before he’s barely situated, “goddamnit Lance!”

 

“We doing this.” His legs pump and he sang the ABC’s to not think about his lungs complaining at him right away.

 

He keeps going, he was damn well not going to unimpress Keith today. The little racers keep pace besides them, Lance blindly follows the group down the sharp corners and varied landscape.

 

He grits his teeth and Keith leans forward and says into his ear, “there it is, you got this.” Lance’s chest expands like an inflating balloon, praise had that effect on him.

 

He was pitching forward by the end with his knees giving way, but he leapt at the final line and hisses as he lands on his knees and skids to a stop.

 

Keith jumps off his back and Lance whoops when he helps him out, “did you see that!? Total badass ending, who’s the man Keith my guy? It’s me.”

  
“It’s not over yet.” Keith grabbed him underneath the knees, “Viv do everything in twos.”

Before he can process Keith’s movement, the world spins and Keith picks him up- bridal style.

 

“What are you doing?” He snaps and Keith starts running.

 

“We don’t have time.” Lance instinctively wraps his arms around his neck.  
  
“Bullshit!” Too late, they are running down the second league of the journey, giving a Lance has a moment to hold his breath.

 

“Faster,” he crows like a rider spurring on his horse.

 

“You want to do this? You’re like 5’10.”  
  
Lance snickers, “5’11.”  
  
“This is no time to brag!” Keith’s cheeks were flushed, “you’re lucky I train.” Keith bounds into the finish without falling down spectacularly like Lance did.

 

Lance engages him in a high-five when he lands back on his feet, “we got this.”  
  
Keith was breathless but his lips were upturned, “of course.” He was smiling, “we’re paladins of Voltron.”  
  
“Stranded ones but sure.” They momentarily celebrate and let the adrenaline drag them into happy chatter and circling each other as overstimulated puppies do.

 

A humanoid with a clipboard approaches them, “congratulations! You are moving up. Names and weapon of choice.”

 

They exchange a glance, “weapons.” Lance repeats somewhat numbly, the Viv didn’t play around.

 

\------------------

 

_The Match_

 

The game was complicated in the way monopoly is frustrating: too many rules. They got a sword and a shield, offense and defense, their backs had to stay glued to each other, back to back like the Viv fought with their sibling. Finally, there were multi-color circles on the ground. You couldn’t step anywhere but the circles.

 

Lance sighs, “these guys gotta be kidding us. Only in the circles.”  
  
Keith’s eyes were a fiery blaze, “stay alert. Watch your footwork first and foremost.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, you a got your sword fetish in full swing... No pun intended.” Lance had to hold the shield and wasn’t exactly excited about it. Nobody was impressed by shield work.

 

“As long as you do anywhere better than the castle shields, we’ll do fine.”

 

Lance smiled and clapped Keith on the back, “that’s not hard. I’ve had coffee stronger than the castle shields.  
  
Keith let a little melodic laugh and seemed more pumped.

 

They fist-bumped, “we got this.”

 

They got a wooden sword, the object was to push the others out of the ring, or have them lose your partner.

 

They get fitted with thin armor and position themselves across from an odd duo of a rail thin humanoid with expansive ears and a portly fellow with a armored gut and a face cover. It was one of the street security guards- the ones they pissed off in the first day.

 

Lance gulped, Keith aligns his back to Lance’s, “watch your footing.”  
  
“You’re lucky you don’t have the shield.” They get back to back.

 

“Are you still complaining about that?”

 

They hear the squawk before Lance can gather his shredded thoughts, which was for the best.

The guard swings the club right from out of the gate, Lance lifts the shield and they are almost thrown off their feet on the first impact.

 

He backs up the club for a second swing, “down!” Lance commands and they duck this time below his aggressive stroke.

 

“To the left,” Keith grits and Lance watches the circles as they swing around and come up to their flank.

 

Keith jabs at the bug guy, who blocks with a club, but Keith already swerved to slash at his partner. The rail-thin man wobbles before his shield is even up. Lance catches another clubbing meant to brain Keith in the forehead.

 

“Bring it!” Lance cries and that seems to put their enemies into the offense, they lumber from circle to circle to keep up the pressure. Lance looks down and keeps the shield up.

 

“To the right, full circle.” Lance almost loses Keith on his back as they take a 360, Lance pushes on the other denses shield, right as Keith slashes at his legs, he loses his balance.

 

One of his feet exits the circles.

 

“Done!” The moderator cries and Lance and Keith jumpa up and down as voices cheer them on for one of the first victories.

 

Lance beams out and swings Keith around in a hug, “we’re a good team.”

 

“Well, I suppose you did keep up.” Keith says breathlessly and Lance slugs him in the shoulder.

 

“If you want to fight, just say so.” The celebrate anyway.

 

Of course, the Viv do everything in twos. The next round is quicker, two Viv with their beak like mouths over-confident and young.

 

Lance distracts them this time with shit-talking ‘you’re mother was an egg and father never loved you!’...It wasn’t his best.

 

Keith gets in right away and stabs at their back- separating them almost immediately and forcing them to lose the match by not being back to back.

 

By the time the last of the rounds wrap up, the sun is setting and Lance is sweating through his thin T-shirt.

 

“I am so ready for the last round.” He announces and Keith grabs him around the neck with some effort.

 

“Don’t think we’re not going all the way. No flaking out on me.”  
  
Lance laughs easily, “all the way. I’m ready for anything.”  
  
The get a free meal from the committee and the final event was announced: endurance, and it was something alright.

 

_Round and Round_

 

“Dance.” Keith immediately says blankly as they approach a large empty square- a band sat in the corner with drums and mysterious circles. “Marathon dancing.”  
  
Lance tries to creakily smile, “at least it’s only for how long you can go.” He offers and Keith is still mumbling to himself.

 

“Good. We’d lose otherwise- especially you.”  
  
Lance pouts, “I miss the fighting rounds.”  
  
He wipes at his brow and he’s not sure if he can endure this either- it was a lot of contact with a lot of unsaid words between them.

 

“But ride or die, right?” Lance reiterates again weakly, they were going to do it.

 

They are at least one block away from the apothecary, so they could always run home with their tails between their legs.

 

But Keith was awkwardly putting his arms on Lance’s neck already and Lance was somehow trying to figure out where his hands should go.

 

Sleeping next to each other for three months was one thing- touching was a just thing that happened. This was like. His hips. Waist. A problem.

 

Keith looked down at him in irritation, “get on with it.”

The rules for this game was a lot more straightforward: dance. With your partner- and keep going until you were the last one left.

 

Keith and Lance jerkily got their arms on each other and Lance has to count up to a very high number and concentrate on the darkening skies.

 

Keith was making little low noises, but before they can delve into deeper into the ‘what the fuck’ zone, the band starts up, and endurance dancing is on.

 

They sway from side to side and Lance sweats a little and starts snickering, “it’s like a middle school dance.” He huffs.

 

Keith’s head tilts, “I tried to avoid all of those.”

 

Lance looked down at the ground, “yeah. I couldn’t get most the girls to go with me. But Katherine Holding! She turned me in circles until I almost puked.” He beamed at the memory, Katherine was twice his size at the time.

“Well if that’s what you're into…” Keith picked up their pace and started to swing Lance around.

 

“Oh, no no,” Lance loses his balances and Keith holds him as they twist into other competitors and snicker at almost falling over. “Okay. You’re an ass.” Lance pants and Keith shrugs.

 

“We already knew that. And I’m in good company.”  
  
“I am a perfect gentleman! I danced with Katherine Holding.” He defends and they sink back into their awkward side to side.

 

Keith looks away and his feet shuffle, “Sometimes girls asked me in middle school. I always said no, mostly since the dances put on were the worst.”  
  
Lance raises his eyebrows, “the worst? Like this?”  
  
Keith shrugged, “Not as much this.” He smiles, uncertain and unpracticed. “After what we’ve been through. Not the worst.”

A silence hangs between like fruit about to drop. They sway from side to side, Lance looks back up and does something he’s not practiced at either, “how are you doing?”  
  
Keith’s footwork falters, “fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”  
  
“I mean...What about voodoo dreams? Didn’t your write that...” He stops off, he didn’t want to mention to purple-and-ugly.

“And what about your illness?” Keith parries back and Lance sighs.

 

“Don’t fall apart on me. We’re in this together.” He beams up, “Like we say, we are a good time.”

Keith looks away again and his grip slips a little. Forty-five minutes in they find out you didn’t have to be touching to be dancing.

 

Lance starts to pass the time and try to capture Keith’s attention, he does start to laugh.

 

“Disco?” Lance attempts the moonwalk and finger wiggle.

 

“It’s a classic!” He crows and discos it out, Keith was doing the bare minimum. “And I’m not doing the ‘my foot is stuck in wet cement and jerking my body to get it out, like some people.” He says pointedly. Keith continues to do the wet-cement dance.

 

Lance does everything to keep them awake as the night wears on: disco, the windshield wiper, All the Single Ladies, the chicken dance.

 

“You look like you’re at a bad wedding after party.” Lance continues to do the chicken.

 

“I am, it’s called I’m married to winning, and Keith happens to be there.” Keith rolls his eyes and continues his little shimmies.

 

“I’m conserving my energy.” Keith explains, which turned out to be a good idea as Lance starts to yawn when the moon starts to droop across the sky.

 

They start to slow dance around the last hours,the band changes out and they play much slower tempo, plus Lance needs someone to lean on to not keel over in the night.

 

“One more hour, one more hour.” He keeps muttering.

 

Keith was looking around, “there are still six more couples.”  
  
Lance sighs and puts his chin on top of Keith’s shoulder, “this is all the middle school dance I could want. Except I am going forever and not dancing alone.”  
  
Keith looks up, “I would have danced with you.”  
  
Lance takes a moment to process that and lights up, “what’s that?”  
  
Keith seems to identify his error late into the night. “You’d have to get me there. And then actually asked me. So it’d be improbable.”  
  
Lance watched his face, “You underestimate how determined I was at thirteen.” He laughs lowly, “I bet you were an awkward middle schooler-braces? Neck brace?”

 

Keith makes a face, “Excuse me, I got love letters in my locker.” Keith looked thoughtfully up at the sky, “I may have had a bowl cut though.”  
  
Lance laughs more boisterously and his arms tighten around Keith’s shoulders, “perfect!”

 

“Don’t look too happy.” Keith grumbles and Lance spins them around faster.

 

“I’m happy that that couple over there just ran into a wall and fell over.” They see someone else get out.

 

Lance yawns and Keith shakes him, “you stay awake too.”  
  
“I’m the master at this.” He proclaims and Keith threatens to bite him if his eyes close.

 

Lance teases Keith about his bowl cut again, somehow worse than the mullet and Keith says he bets Lance was terrible at school.

 

“I’ll have a you know, I worked extra hard, I got into the garrison didn’t I?”

 

Keith concedes that, “yeah.” He huffs, “yeah, you did.” The air was growing taught like a stretched string across a stirring pot.

 

They manage another hour, but Keith’s eyes are closing, Lance leans into him sleepily.  
  
He puts his head on his shoulder again, his chest is inches from Keith’s and his hands grasp a little harder, “did you ever go to summer camp?”

 

Keith jostles him, “no. What?”  
  
“We did something like this thing. Dared each other to stay up all night. Sometimes me and Hunk were in our bunk and woke each other up. It was that kind of summer camp.”

“Okay? That’s fine.” Keith’s words were slurring.

 

“You wanna kiss?” Lance finally ventures as the sun can be seen on the horizon like a middle finger.

 

Keith freezes in his grasp, “Lance. Don’t mess with me, I’m half dead here.”  
  
Lance comes up to his ear, “Hunk didn’t feel the same way about me, but it’s just a thing that happens. It’s not a big deal, we could stay awake.”  
  
Keith shook his head, “it’s not. People just don’t...kiss.”  
  
“Sure they do!” Lance beams, “here.” He kisses him on the side of the mouth- but not directly, he wasn’t that bold.

 

Keith looked up, “don’t one up me like that.”  
  
Lance closed his eyes and stuck his nose up, “I’ve been one-upping you all day. Romantic dancing is not an exception.”  
  
“You did a terrible washing machine dance for an hour.” Keith says dryly.

 

Lance looks away and scratches his nose, “it’s not a big deal. Forget about it.”  
  
“Get down here. It’s not a big deal.” Lance’s cheeks were still burning, Keith climbed him like a tree, sharp nails and weight dragging him downward.

 

The kiss crooked, too quick but soft and full of heat, halting like a teenager learning to drive a stick-shift for the first time. They kiss while the night loses it’s will and the dancers fall over besides them.

 

Keith kisses Lance and Lance is nothing but breathless, heart thudding pulse against his wrist like professional racquetball tournament.

 

It’s longer than he imagined and Keith parted and his head twisted from side to side. “There. No big deal.”  
  
Lance nods, “like summer camp. No big deal.”  
  
They agree to keep each other awake and Lance steals another kiss across the mouth like a burglar, plum sweet and eager, bending down and telling him he would have asked him in middle school.

 

They fall asleep with the sun half way up and only two other dancers left standing. Keith’s head lulls on Lance’s chest and Lance falls over before he can catch either of them.

  
Keith yells at him and they get third. Which earned them five bottle caps, two flags and 100 credits. It was enough for a nice meal and maybe a distraction from what just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 13 ;)


	16. The Junkpit

Handholding was out of the question. So was looking him in the eye at the moment or being the proper color in his cheeks ever again. On the other hand, dying of some form of embarrassment was a real possibility, and thinking about it too much was like an attack of one of those infomertials that got stuck in your head:

_Head-on, apply directly to the forehead, head-on, apply your head directly to the nearest wall._

Keith’s body ached from keeping himself as far away from Lance on the mattress as possible. ‘It wasn’t a big deal’ he remembers being the exact phrase. Yeah, that was bullshit.

Keith's mind had been replaying the moment for the last three days and having a bitch of a time trying to 1) forget, 2) make sense of it.

He sat in the shop and contemplated his own dreaded awareness of the slow descent they were heading on- that they had been heading on since the ship. Yeah. It included his insides turning to jelly and a string of cursing in a constant rhythm in his head.

Lance was now out at his day job- paid for trash collection, none the wiser to anything but probably his ticking thought process: ‘I’ll do whatever I like. Look, a monkey-dog, I love that. I love ruining Keith.’

Keith slumped down and continued slowly pouring a sap into a bowl. Updah sat across from him, watching his progress steadily.

“Okay, so you let the pulp stew for two days and then mix it in with the chemical’s you were calling 2B and 2A, I can get them on most planets and they’ll be colorless, tasteless, and only 2A will smell like anything.” He repeats Updah’s words to her. They smelled like Lance, since Lance had two month’s taking this concoction and sweating it out, and he had to stop himself from trying to sniff it more.

“Slow down there, combine it gradually else it mixes too quick. Spoils.” Updah snaps, Keith nods and steadies his hand, watching it goop down second by second.

“Updah,” he says absently. “Do Juk-kin, uh, you, do you guys kiss? Put their mouths together?” Keith asked with a gravel voice. He was a tough kid with tough questions.

Updah’s eyes narrowed somehow and she points at her beak like mouth under her nitrogen-mask, “you tell me.”  
  
Keith flinches, “alright, no then. So you're not an affectionate society, shoulda known from knowing you.” Keith snorted and continues to watch the orange of the pulp seep into the clear liquid.

Updah shakes her head, “we’re affectionate or whatever kid. It’s just not like whatever you and your lover are dancing around on pins about.”

If Keith had been drinking something he would have spit it out, “so this,” he points to the concoction and changes the topic, “I’ll need like forty-five doses for each of my friends?” Keith was learning to make the cure for Fisks, one step at a time. Just in case his friends still had it when they got back.

Updah barked a laugh. “more. You’ll need extra- ‘round sixty for them each.” Keith could have sighed, “and don’t worry about your boyfriend, he’s an idiot, but he’ll die for people he loves- got that look in his eye.”  
  
Keith could have also choked at that moment, “do you have to do that?”  
  
She laughs lowly, “Sorry. Too tempting, even for me.” She was teasing him, but in the nudging sort of way.

“You are both so young, gotta tease a little bit. You’ll figure it out.” She reaches over and pokes him harshly to pour slower again.

“Sure. Maybe on my deathbed when I’m 70- when I can look him in the eye again.” She laughs wholeheartedly in her low gravely voice and he has to actually sigh deeply.

Keith was going to ask her more about digesting butterflies instead of turning into a pile of glitter-glue that read ‘got a crush’ like a five year old.

They both turned to the door instead, a patron stood at the door, looking resigned and tapping his fingertips together anxiously.

“Come in already.” Updah says and the patient scurries in. “Now,” she turns back to Keith, “take this.”  
  
She places a shot in his hands and Keith blinks. “I uh, this is a needle.”  
  
“You’ll need to know how to give your friends shots if you want to fix ‘em. One shot, each day ‘till the spots go away and they can breath. And yes, that is a damn needle.” She explains and the patient glances at them intermittently.

“This isn’t my area of expertise.” He says blankly but takes the needle and gets a little closer to the soft-looking alien with velvety skin and down-turned flopping ears.

“Nonsense,” she grumbles, “if you weren’t so set on leaving this planet so much, I’d take you on.”

Keith almost jerks backwards. “Updah.” He faces, “that was almost nice.”

 

“I don’t lie.” She says bluntly and forces his hand close to the crook of the creature's arm, “now, Moov.”  
  
“I thought you wanted me to do this?” Keith questions.

 

“No, I’m addressing the kid, his name is Moov, you’ve seen him goddamn before.”  
  
“Oh.” Keith says sheepishly as Moov seemed to try to smile at him, quiet and twitchy.

 

Keith searches the kids arm and Updah directs him, “find the largest vein by smacking the area gently- have ‘em do a pushup or secure the area if you have to…”

Keith was a little mystified about the situation he had ended up in, but he finds a purple vein on Moovs elbow and positions the thin needle.

It’s over before it even began, one little insert and then one push down, Moov was rubbing the spot and tried to pay Updah- who refused the credits.

“Buy something nice for your mother,” she says instead, hand waving him away, “God knows she deserves it ya’ brats.”  
  
Keith huffs a laugh and Moov darts out of the room with a little pep in their step, Keith would never admit anything about a glow in his chest from it, but it was there.

 

“You’ve got that look in your eye,” Keith looked up from washing his hands and Updah was examining him, “you could do what I do.”  
  
Keith shakes his head and finishes making the list in his head of how to make the cure: chemicals A and B. Pulp of the crew pepper, two days, mix, mix again…

 

“I’m a pilot. I have a universe to save. Plus,” Keith makes a little smile, “I wasn’t exactly the gentle type back home.”  
  
“You’ve got them angry eyes, like someone with a burn down his throat, sure,” she picks at her leg and nods, “but those are the type who help people. Once you calm down a little from whatever this is.”  
  
“Whatever this is?” He looks up.

“From being a straight punk.”  
  
Keith shakes his head, “I’m not straight.” He mumbles downward into his work and Updah laughs at him- whatever he said translated into something hilarious in her language.

But Keith can only miserably think he’d probably never get a boyfriend if he couldn’t even handle a late-night kiss that didn’t mean anything. He’d have to kiss through a bag or something, start with pinky-holding and breathing in the same direction.

“You’ll settle down,” Updah says as she rubs her feet and Keith still narrows his eyes at her, “think about it. If you didn’t walk around like a cat with it’s paws burned, you’ve got a steady hand, a sharp mind. You could be a medic.”  
  
Keith shakes his head and has no idea what she’s talking about, Keith was a half-alien mess who was going to slash down an evil empire- it was probably what he was born for. But the words do sort of permeate his head like a new mold of something he didn’t recognize.

Keith jumps when Lance bursts into the room, coming back from God knows what.

 

“Hey-oh!” He still had a goofy grin over his face and a flush to his cheeks, and it was constantly like that moment when the Wile E coyote fell off a cliff with the acme sign that read ‘uh-oh.’

“What is it?” Keith grits out instead as he concentrates on making the medicine they’d need.

“I cracked it!” Lance pranced from foot to foot.

“What?” Keith finally looked up again- not at him but at the air around his shoulder.

“The diary! Come on, come on.” Lance reaches for him and Keith scurries to his feet before impact, Bruce Willis successfully diverting Armageddon, day saved. “I wanna show you, hurry up.”

Keith groaned and tried to think of an excuse, his oven was running?

Lance was waving at Updah, “we’ll come back and buy you like, a bigger back room once we get back to our friends.” He says happily.

“Don’t!” She grunts, “‘less your friends want to buy me the whole planet. I could use a planet.” She continues to rub her feet and Lance laughs in surprise.

Keith wanders outside with him as Lance holds up the diary as well as Keith’s wrist communicator, Keith questions him, but Lance just wanted to take him somewhere. Keith moves one step at a time.

“What is it?” He asks in exasperation as Lance leads him out to the junkyard for what seemed like no reason.

“It’s right there, right here.” Lance drags him up a junk pile and Keith doesn’t know what this means.

 

\-------------

 

The sun was slowly setting in the edge of the planet in a ball of orange tinged red, a fiery orb too swollen to be anything close to the earth’s sun.

Lance leads him up a mountain of broken furniture and bags of discarded items, Lance continues to chatter all the while.

“Anyway, I was thinking, we’re not getting this, it can’t be that hard, Pidgeon was planning on sending this to me or Hunk, and Hunk is a seriously smart guy, engineering and all- but what would me or him have in common to get from this?”  
  
“Uh-huh.” Keith watches his feet.

“We used to play this game in the garrison, or I played it and tried to get Pidge to join in, she was kinda downer back in the school. Anyway, she liked computers so obvs I downloaded junk onto to her hard drive to like, mess around. It played Never Gonna Give You Up, my lock screen was permanently changed to a shirtless Vladimir Putin- stuff like that.”  
  
“Yeah. Sounds something you’d start.” He accidentally caught the edge of Lance’s hand as they walk and Keith nearly loses his breath, Lance stops at the top of the mountain.

“Anyway, so we would have to break into the coding and get whatever message they left there- memes and junk.”

“Alright.”

“Oh, oh, look at this.” Lance pointed outward and Keith dodges his hand again.

They turn towards the junk valley in this junk landscape just inside of the city. A city not very good at running itself. It was bright, the sunlight reflecting off the metals and trinkets in a fiery orange that lit the landscape into a hobble of dark shadows and painted edges.

Lance reaches for something and brings out Keith’s wrist computer. “I remembered that it wasn’t originally a written diary, you just wrote it down. It was digital.”  
  
Lance started to mess with Keith’s wrist communicator and Keith folds his arms over his chest, “So?”

“Watch.” Lance pulls up the coding of the diary, he was beaming at Keith’s direction, Keith studies the coding as Lance scrolls down, he pauses and Keith can see it.

“The coordinates are embedded into it.” Keith says in awe, there it was: Nefertiti Galaxy, around planet Pilgrim 2B.  
  
Lance nods enthusiastically, “who’s the man? Tell me, who is it? Me. Lance, the man.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes, “you’re not any man Lance, congrats, you are The Man.”  
  
Lance grabs his hands and spins him around, Keith feels the entire population of a small village yelling in his head. “We’re going to get out of here.” Lance sings and Keith tries to feel more focused on that and feeling elated more than how Lance’s hands felt.

“Finally,” Keith breathes and watches his feet again before ending the dance as soon as possible.

Hand holding was out of the question.

“Come on,” Lance shakes him, “this is what we’ve been waiting for! We just need like, a map to type these bad boys in and we can get out of here. Back to our friends.” Lance says and Keith barely feels a rise- only a muted mutter.

“Yeah,” he looks up and smiles, “okay. Good job Lance.”  
  
Lance’s fast fingers dance at his sides before rubbing his neck, “I know.”  
  
Keith looks around, “and uh, you wanted to show me it here, why? Not that I don’t appreciate your taste in garbage and wallowing in it.”

“Oh,” Lance shimmied back and forth, “um, I mean, look at it.” Lance points down and out at the sunset and Keith makes a face. “As well as…” Lance trailed off and his dark blue eyes meet Keith’s in a show of light and hope. "I wanted to..."

  
“What-” Keith opens his mouth but Lance’s hands snuck around his waist and pulled him in, the kiss was shy but warm, it had intention behind it.

Keith froze and tried to tell himself to punch him in the jaw. He pauses and closes his eyes, he lets it happen anyway- mouth barely open and sweet like sunrises in junkyards.

Keith breaths in deeply and his hips lean into Lance’s legs, he takes another breath and slugs Lance in the shoulder.

 

“What the fuck.” He finally says and his heart droops like a wilting flower in a shooting yourself in the foot shop.

Lance blinks and his hands hang in the air where Keith had just been, “um,” Lance’s face was red for once, he was aware of it, “I was, uh, thinking this was the best way to tell you.”  
  
Keith tilted his head to the side and put his hands on his hips, “that you cracked Pidge’s diary? I already said, good job, but we can’t just keep...I mean…” Eventually it would mean something Lance, didn’t he know that?

 

“No! I mean tell you,” Lance’s feet shuffled and he kicked the loose leg of a table off and it clattered down the pile one painful, empty collision at a time. “I kinda, sorta, like you.”  
  
“Kinda, sorta?” Keith’s face was burning and he did feel like a cat with sunburned paws that was ready to bolt at any moment.

“Don’t be an ass Keith! I’m trying to tell you something,” Lance whined and Keith scratches his wrist and thinks thoughts he tries to catch like butterflies in a sandwich bag.

“But,” Keith gulps down the words, “but.” His eyes search upward and Lance put his hands in his pockets and leaned back.

“I do.”

"Seriously?"  
  
"What? You want a poetry slam or declarations- I mean I could try."

Keith kicks his ankle and waits for Lance to clutch at it.

“What the fuck,” Lance bends over and Keith grabs his neck and this time kisses him roughly, a voices is telling him ‘no wait, stop,’ but he wasn’t going to at that moment.

Lance made a small surprised noise into his mouth, but then tilts his face and lets Keith nip his bottom lip and draws him into a deeper kiss as he straightens his back up.

Keith is dragged up, and Lance holds him up by the small of the back. He doesn’t care, the moment warms him like a rising hot-air balloon in his insides.

‘He’s only doing this because he’s stuck with you.’ Keith a voice hisses into his ear but he kisses a little harder, maybe to bruise or mark and Lance holds on tighter.

Keith finally pulls back, panting, “what is this.”  
  
Lance laughs in delight, “I don’t know. Don’t you like it?”

“You thought a junkyard was romantic?” Keith laughs and Lance shrugs, giving him a version of a toy glider he found in that pile and Keith blushes.

 

They start walking back, Keith reaches out his hand and thinks maybe he could try it out. He grabs Lance’s hand and doesn’t look at him, Lance makes an indescribable noise and then swings their arms back and forth in excitement. Keith was making progress.

 

“What are the plans for getting out of here?” Lance asks and Keith knows they have some things to talk about that they aren’t.

  
Instead he halfway turns to him and feels the springtime bloom in his gut with Lance squeezing his palm, “I have some ideas.” He smirks and rolls his tongue ring, “I've been working on this one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 15


	17. The Takeoff

Lance’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the light when he yawned and made their way into the main room, the air was warm and crisp like leaves crunching and Lance felt a tension lining his back.

He took a deep breath opened his arms wide, “this going to be the strangest place I may miss.”

Keith glances behind him over his shoulder, “don’t get sentimental on me.”  
  
Lance shrugs and pokes at one of the plants growing sideways, “I’m not. It’s the truth- all this junk saved my life.”  
  
“That is sentimental.” The gravely voice of grandma Updah makes him jump and they turn their heads to the front of the shop.

“Oh,” Keith walked forwards, “we didn’t want to wake you. We did leave most of the rest of the money we made on our beds.”  
  
“We hope it’s enough!” Lance chimes as he waves at her.

Updah makes a little shoulder shake, “take it. I don’t want the money of fools in love- it’s bad luck and bad for my back.”

“In love?” Lance almost chokes on his spit as the color in his cheeks flares up, but Keith stays steady.

“It’s a thank you. Take it, you’ve helped us enough.”  
  
Her beaked mouth curls into a sharp grin, “damn straight I did. But someone has to do that sort of thing, else we’d all be dead by sunrise and Gallra’s your uncle.”  
  
Lance snickered at that, “close enough…” Keith nonchalantly throws something at him which hits Lance squarely in the center of the head. He grunts and Keith keeps talking.

They say a very side-stepping sort of goodbye with lots of ‘don’t come back.’ and ‘we don’t plan to,’ and only a few ‘this meant a lot to us.’

Updah was waving, “it was nothing. Save a life, here, there, all ungrateful, but.” She was smiling again, “good enough.”  
  
She takes both into a very short and gripping hug that squeezed Lance’s neck and made his life flash before his eyes when her nitrogen breath heaves into his ear.

He laughs woodenly when he stands back up rubbing his shoulder, “thanks Updah. We mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she turns around and starts walking the other direction, “go already! My egg sac is deteriorating.”

They make weird faces at that statement but gather up the rest of their belongings: some spare clothes (very few), their bayards they managed to hold onto, Katie’s diary and wrist communicators, and finally the basics of a medicine for Fisks disease. They would help their friends yet.

They nod at each other and Lance mournfully traces the door frame, “goodbye door…” He murmurs.

“Don’t you-” Lance kisses the door frame with a dramatic flourish and Keith groans.

“You never hit me in the face when you swung open.” He croons and walks outside into the chalky dark night. Quiet and hampered by the curfew and the thick velvet of night. “Goodbye bike. I think I’ll miss you the most. Especially when Keith kept falling off of you and messing up his hair.”  
  
“Oh my God.” Keith grabbed his wrist and tugs Lance away before he can finish his sweet-farewells to their few possessions.

“Come one,” Lance chuckles and stands up straight, “it was cute,” he leans down and kisses Keith on the cheek, “you’re cute.”

That certainly got Keith, he started stuttering something and then stopping again, his cheeks firehouse red as Lance snickered.

“Worth it.” He mutters to himself as he tries to take Keith’s hand and keep walking, things were lining up for them.

Keith shakes his head and backs up, “we should talk…” Lance’s smile fades but then Keith looks down at the ground and then back up. “You shouldn’t talk at the meeting I mean. The Dellra barely agreed to let me have a second person along.”  
  
Lance nods and puts his hands behind his head, “yeah, yeah, whatever, lead the way dear liaison.”  
  
Keith nods and the edges of his face are smoothed by the silver light of the sky and something hopeful beneath his tense cheekbones. “We’re really getting out of here.”

Lance huffs a smile and nods his head forward, they dart in and out of street corners, their feet padded by the murky streets and hush of the sleeping city.

A rare night guard intercepts their path and Lance pushes Keith up against the nearest corner and winks as they hide.

“I was hoping we could spend some time like this-” Keith puts his hand over Lance’s mouth and they wait. Lance bears his weight down a little on Keith to get closer, warmth pooling at the intersections where their limbs that touched, but Keith soon pushed them apart and they stagger down the next road.

“Okay,” they slow down as they reach the last alley on apothecary street. “After some strange errands, one of them involving a so-called ghost by the way, they agreed to these tickets. We can’t offend them now.”  
  
“You’ll do great honey,” Lance croons sardonically and Keith rolls his eyes, and knocks unexpectedly on an alley gate. “You didn’t join a gang for nothing after all…”

The gate swings open and they shuffle in while looking at the high walls around the alley and strangely clean pavement.

“Remember, the Cusaq are a gender-fluid species who change sex based on rank and mating season.”  
  
“Okay?” Lance raised an eyebrow, “the more you know.”  
  
“Just, don’t make any presumptions. Or flirt.” The wander deeper into the dark of the lane and Lance wonders why Keith seems ancy.  
  
“Why would I flirt when I have y-”  
  
“You leave within the hour. Hurry up.” Both Lance and Keith freeze and what appeared to be a fairy-person walked out from behind a dumpster.

Lance saw why Keith told him not to flirt. They were beautiful.

High cheek bones, solid black eyes, a pair of wings as high as two people and strange shimmery glow off their skin as thin as tissue paper with bright blue veins underneath.

Lance clears his throat and attaches his eyes directly to Keith in a gesture of ‘I only have eyes for you’ sort of thing. Keith mutters and walks forward- he may not appreciate romantic gestures.

“I am here.”  
  
The Cusaq nods and presents him with what looks like passes, “it will go by the planet you're looking for after a hyper jump. I recommend not getting off before then.”

“Oooh,” Lance leans forward despite himself, the tickets looked shimmery in the low lights.

Keith nods and the alien presents the tickets once Keith sticks out his tongue and presents the tongue ring and frog insignia, Lance would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation if the fairy-person wasn’t a head taller than him and arms as thick as tree trunks.

“The cruise,” Lance perks up, _a cruise_ , “is docked above the planet. You will be snuck onto a supply ship and go aboard as extra crew, we work documents for maid, waiter or laundry clerk. Your choice.”

“Ooh, ooh, I call waiter. I want the suit.” Lance points forward fervidly and the shining person almost smiles at him with their pointed gleaming teeth. His blood freezes a tad at the shark-like gesture, but he’s handed the documents for ‘waiter.’ “Be a maid. Be a maid.” Lance chants as he watches Keith, “wear a maid dress, wear a maid dress,” Lance continues to chant.

Keith seems to think with a hand on his chin, “laundry clerk.” He declares instead and Lance hangs his head.

“So close,” he says under his breath and remembers to tease Keith about wearing a maid outfit later that night.

Keith takes his papers and hands the Cusaq a parcel as well, the ethereal creature nods and places a hand over Keith’s shoulder, “the Dellra thank you for your service.”  
  
That sounded ominous, even to Lance’s ears, and he sort of wants to bundle Keith up and drag him out of their in his sweater.

Keith just nods instead and they part ways with a creaking, eerie feeling to Lance’s joints.

“That was weird…”

“It’s a space gang. It’s what you’d expect.” Keith says dismissively, Lance bites his tongue and pushes Keith out of the alley warily.

“Well, all I’m saying, is I’m glad that’s over.”  
  
“Come on,” Keith directs them, “it’s time for the drop space.”

Lance sighs and follows heavily, once more jogging through the night and dodging night guards that patrolled every now and then.

They make it to the wide open landing strips of the city's heart, the lifeblood of the small pit-stop planet made for temporary stays, landing pads that existed to be left.

Lance stretches and looks out across their path, “this is something else. We really are leaving.”  
  
Keith was stretching too, his mouth even curving up in a smile as well, “yup.” He rolled his shoulder, “we might finally be getting out of here.”  
  
Lance gleams, “don’t even say it,” he pounces and tries to get him into a headlock, Keith snorts and tries to push him away. “You’ll jinx us.”

“Lance,” he warns as they tussle in the open field.

“Oh no, no getting out of this one.” He wrestles the smaller boy down, but Keith was resisting in non-playful way. He pushes him away and sits down, a grimace on his tight features, Lance’s chest deflates.

“What?” He asks openly, but Keith was looking away.

“There,” Keith got up and hauled Lance over by the shirt sleeve, “time to go.”  
  
It was gruff and uneven and Lance felt a ice forming his gut at the site of Keith’s body: crossed and strained and facing the opposite direction of him.

Lance swallows with a grating lump in his throat, they spy what appeared to be a small pod with jets on the bottom, it was black and long with thick windows and open doors. They glance at the schematics as the pod was being loaded up.

“On three?” Lance offers, but Keith was already running, they dart onto the little food and supplies ship before the workers are even back with the last load.

They follow the Dellra instructions to an extra room with a side window, now they just couldn’t be spotted in the large window and they’d be golden.

Lance whoops, “easy as pie! We really do make a good team.” He offers another hand but Keith was still balled up into himself and not looking at him. They were inches apart in the small space but Lance could feel the ocean licking at his ankles between them.

“Keith,” he says gently and bites his lip, “something up?”  
  
Keith opens his mouth, then shuts it, his eyes turning off like flashlights with dying batteries, he just turns his face and looks out the window.

“Hey, we made it.” Lance leans forward and tries to kiss him, butterfly soft and smooth as warmed milk. Maybe Keith was more upset about leaving then he let on, maybe he had a stomach ache, maybe..

Keith gave in for a moment, pliant and loose, Lance felt him ooze into the kiss, leaning into his body and head tilting to fit just so into Lance’s hands.

Then Keith pushes back, gently at first and then fully ejecting Lance off of him. “We can’t do this.” He declares.

 

Lance blinks and sticks out his bottom lip, “it seems like we were doing it just fine.”  
  
“No,” Keith frowns and his eyes are hardened bits of coal, not even burning in the middle, “think about it Lance.”  
  
“Alright,” Lance adjust himself in the tiny space, “I’m thinking it feels good and we should like, kiss and date and whatever.”  
  
“No.” Keith says firmly and runs his hands through his long hair, “don’t you ever fucking think for a second?”  
  
Lance’s eyes go wide, “about what? What are you thinking about so hard, oh thinker? I’m the one who cracked Pidge’s diary!”

“We were stuck with each other! I saved your life!”

“Yes! Sure! It was hot!” Lance says back emphatically and Keith blushed but his hands never stopped being bawled up and an angry line between his eyes.

“Lance. Why weren’t we together before being stranded?”  
  
Lance scratches his chin, “I dunno, I mean Pidge said it best, we were kind of dumb.”  
  
Keith sighs and rests back, the ship starts to jostle as it’s doors close, “this would happen with anyone. They save their life and they fall in love, or uh, like, with them after having no other options-”  
  
“No other options.” Lance goes dry in the mouth and reels back.

“Yes. We were hormonal and...had feelings. Desperate feelings. And latched onto the closest warm body, you can’t just start a relationship based off of, of proximity.”  
  
Lance unfolded himself, wilting against the metal door, he bangs his head against it three times, “I can’t believe...you are the worst.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes, “tell me I’m wrong. Tell me we didn’t just hook up because we were the only ones here. Because of arbitrary warm-fuzzy feelings from me saving you.”

Lance closed his eyes and took deep breaths in through his nose, “whatever Keith.”  
  
The plane shakes and starts to take off, it’s a very quiet ride ascending back into space, away from the planet around the dying sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 17
> 
> school is starting so I'll be updating only around once a week now!


	18. The Fallout

By the time they reached the cruise ship Keith could hear Lance muttering to himself, “I’m Keith, I love to shit on other people’s feelings, I lived in a desert since probably society hates me, mumuhmuh.”

Keith was trying to ignore him. _You made the right decision_ , he shut his eyes and took deep even breaths. He repeated to himself, imagining the aftereffects of getting home if Keith hadn’t said anything: Lance coming down from his crush high, realizing they were incompatible. He wouldn’t want him once he’s bored- it was temporary.

It was to be expected, Lance was Lance, and Keith didn’t want another chip on his shoulder for a teammate after a breakup farther down the line.

Keith could have been able to handle that then of course- but it was better he did it now. Or at least, that’s the phrase in his head he keeps repeating.

The little ship rattles as it docks with a much larger vessel out of their line of sight, Keith takes a deep breath in. The red of Zanzabar is reflected in the room, red and busy, surrounded by dark skies, distant stars and miles of ships. The pitstops planet.

“It feels good to be back in space.” He tries a cordial smile towards Lance.

Lance glances at him, “I’m Keith, I have the social skills of a marmot mixed with a convict who was convicted for-” Lance looks around wildly, “ _having terrible social skills_.”

Keith would have chuckled at such a Lance phrase, but Lance was also slumping in a ball on the tiny rooms floor and muttering to himself in Spanish- which was translated by the very distant Castle of Lions. But Keith ignores the translation for the sake of his own virtue.

The ship shudders as they finish docking and Keith hurries to the door to sneak out the second the doors open, Keith doesn’t look behind him to see if Lance is following.

“Keith, Keeeith,” Lance kept repeating his name, “what a godawful name, full of vowels and shit. I’m going to call you asshole lord from now on.” Lance declares to his back.

“Lance, I know you’re upset.” Keith tries to say evenly while not looking him in the eye. “But I will kick your ass.”

“Upset? You just broke up with me! After months of flirting and bike riding- or was that just planet hallucinogens to you too?”  
  
There was a bite and a hurt to Lance’s voice that strained in a way that wasn’t funny. Keith takes deep even breaths in through his nose, _he never liked you_. Keith’s brain was being a very bad transistor and stuttered and rumbled under itself.

He drags Lance to the door by the collar and tosses them both out of the ship when the doors automatically open.

The hallway is an even grey metal with one endless corridor on either side, Keith follows instructions and started speed walking to the left.

“Come on.” He hisses and Lance grumbles in his direction, pulling at his own short hair.

They get around the corner and out of the line of sight, “see?” Keith turns to Lance, “easy.”  
  
Lance just scowls at him, and maybe Keith did have the social skills of a marmot mixed with a convict convicted for social skills.

They follow a map to a mess hall with a clamor of chattering voices and the hum of a crowd on the other side.

It takes a very long, silent, ten minutes to get there. Keith tries to think of something to say, to reason with him, but they just make it to the door instead.

Lance huffs and shoves them in right through the double doors, a group of aliens gathered before a podium and what seemed like a ball room. Keith gulps shallowly, it was a lot of people.

“Welcome!” A booming voice greets them and they are shuffled off into the crowd, “you are extra crew for the SS Sweet Crab. And we are happy to have you!”

Keith shows them their papers: a waiter and a laundry clerk. A bulbous alien with a trunk for a mouth winks at them, “welcome to paradise….for the dumbass tourists we serve.”

Keith nods and they stand in the crowd for introductions and the beginning of what he felt might be a very long month. Lance steps on his foot and they settle into the group.

The director of the crew tells them a very brief low-down of the coming events: two weeks, a hyper jump and then two more weeks.

Keith grits him, “here we go.” He whispers, “we’re almost there.”  
  
Lance elbows him, “I want a divorce. Is there another ship I can take to the Nefertiti Solar System?”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes and tries to listen to the new crew initiations.

 

\----------------

 

Life on the SS Sweet Crab it turned out, was very routine and cramped: a bunk in the bowels of the ship, shared with a tiny cabin boy named Cranny and a droid that never slept.

Lance had immediately claimed the top bunk and almost kicked Keith in the face climbing up to it, Keith didn’t have the energy to yell at him like he normally would.

The ship itself was always creaking and lively, playing music deep into the night as the patrons drank their life savings away. Work was everyday, the deep of space was distant but ever present, the days began to blur together in the absence of any sun cycle to follow.

Keith did one thing during the day: collect sheets. Put into machines. Put in second machines. Bleach, bleach, bleach. Towels, pillow covers, tablecloths, rags, and unspeakable stains.

He saw Lance at meals, and by ‘saw’ he mostly meant they walked to breakfast together and that was it for the rest of the day. A rising bile was mounting in the back of Keith’s throat.

“You look like shit.” He says by the third morning for the sake of saying something.

Lance glanced at him as they make their way to the crew mess hall, “Cranny doesn’t talk like this to me.”  
  
“Cranny is a cabin boy who doesn’t stop following me around and would be impressed by gum stuck to the bottom of tables.” Keith frowns, “have even been sleeping?”  
  
Lance puts his hands on his hips, “do you care?”

Keith takes his point and shoots a glare down at the ground, “we can’t do this for the entire next month. We have to be able to form Voltron again.”

“Tell that to yourself!” Lance bangs open the nearest door, “you’re the one who never had any feelings towards me since forever apparently and it’s only on deaths door you were like ‘this Lance guy? He’s alright. Let’s stick my tongue in his mouth'.”

Keith growls, “that’s _not_ how it was.” They part ways at the mess hall to sit at separate sections of the cafeteria.

A kid with feathered-owl ears and a little ring of plated rocks around his head approaches Keith, “hey Keithy!”   

“Hi.” Keith doesn’t even process the sentence as he watches Lance try to wink at a tiny Arusian. He grips his fork a little harder.

Cranny looks between the two of them, “cabin mates should stick together, we should get Lance over here-”  
  
“No.” Keith bites out and puts Cranny’s arm down, “no.”  
  
Cranny shakes his head, “humans are confusing. You came onto together, but don’t even sit together.” His bright, dark eyes focus on Keith and Keith shakes his head.

“And we had a falling out.”

“I’ll say.” He tugs on Keith’s sleeve and points at their meal, “ooh, they have this on your planet?” He points at their sweet peas

“No.”

“They have this?” He indicates the porridge Keith was numbly gnawing on. 

“No.”

“They have this…” It’s a very long morning, with Keith’s head becoming a blur of a migraine by mid-day.

 

\-------------------

 

“Anyway, I was facin’ off with dis bitch in room 221, she was like ‘I ain’t done with me sheets’ and I was like ‘why’d you leave the room then and not put up dat ‘do not disturb shit then?’ Anyway, she almost called the head on me, but I manage to talk my way out of it, ya know?” Keith’s coworker, Shamlaraha described in detail her morning so far. She always had a lot of details to share.

“Okay Sham,”

“Then I went with Trini to the mini bar, snuck some Tropical punches if ya know what I mean and kissed my grandma to the moon if you no what I mean.” No Shamlaraha, I don’t. Keith thinks to himself mildly.

“Sham?”  
  
“Yeh?” She pops her bubblegum and they continue to fold clean sheets in tandem. She was a very tall yellow alien with a willowy frame and eyes as black as ink that took up quite a bit of her face.

“Do you know where I could get noise canceling headphones?” He was trying to be diplomatic with the bright yellow being as she scratched her head.

“What for? Ya’ sick a’ me?” She jokes with a sparkle in her wide eyes.

Keith looked away, “it’s noisy on the ship, more so I guess than the planet we were on. It’s for my friend. To sleep.”

Shamlaraha nods and she sneaks a smile, “aha, that friend you came with, Cran’ told me yer friend looked like a tired nipterp.”

“Right. Yeah. That’s him.” Keith wasn’t great at this.

“Don’t sweat it, I’ll ask Trini.” She pops her gum and smiles, wide and yellow, “you humans looking out for each other is cute.”  
  
Keith bites his lip and it tastes like bitter lemons, “I’m just doing what I need to.”

“Ooh,” she coos and leans in, “you two got a thing?”

Keith shakes his head, “no. It wouldn’t work out.” He says quickly, and then his cheeks glow as she cackles, “we uh, look, we went through some stuff. It made a weird situation.”

“Uh-uh,” She leans over on the table they were working on.

“He thought we were something. I realized, that it was all situational. Not real. And it’d be like uh, your whole thing with Convix you were talking about. A bad deal.” He tries to explain to her.

“And great sex?” She offers the statement wryly.

“No!” Keith’s face glows, “it wasn’t…” He mumbles something and she laughs again.

  
Sham shakes her head and her little tendrils of hay-white hair flips over her shoulder, “you don’t need to explain to me. I’ll look into it.”

“Thanks.” Keith tries a wavering smile and they finish folding what might be his thousandth sheet.

 

\---------------------

 

Shamlaraha comes through a week into what felt like an already very long week, Keith was still feeling a distant din in his chest like a copper pot that was being hit too many times.

Sham got him the dark covered headphones, apparently confiscated from a cruise passenger and Keith asks her to cover for him as he goes to give it to Lance whose shift was over soon.

Keith makes his way through the winding ship: the lower levels were grey on grey with faceless doors and windows every mile or so. They lived in a shoebox, ate in a huge mess hall and served an array of sparkling guests.

Keith makes it to the upper levels, floors painted this time in reds and gold, nice, plush windows the size a trees on either side stood before him: presenting the stars and galaxies as tiny diamonds guests bought the view of.

Keith makes a slight sigh of contentment at the sight of it, he makes a turn to the heart of the ship.

He pauses for a moment before knocking on the back door of the restaurant kitchen.

“Yeah?” An angry voice immediately answers and shoves an ugly squished pug face out towards him.

Keith stands up straight, “is Lance in? I have something for him.” Keith realizes he could have done this later.

The creature shakes its large head, “it important? He’s serving.”  
  
Keith shrugs, “yeah.” He couldn’t turn back now.

The giant creature with trunks for legs lumbers off and Keith taps his fingers on his leg as he waits. Something in him wants Lance to come around the corner with his same smile, glad to see him.

Instead, a greasy kid in a button up shirt and smock steps into the hall, short hair looking singed and baggy stamps of purple under his dark blue eyes.

Keith blinks and dumbly holds up the little bag, “here.”  
  
Lance blinks at him mildly, “did you...bring me a hacksaw or something for my feet?” Lance almost joked with him, “or this couldn’t wait?”

Keith shakes his head, “I just got it. Open it.”  
  
Lance wipes his hands on his apron, a garment tied precisely in a bow and hugging his trim waist, Keith shoves his hands in his pockets and looks away.

Lance blinks as he pulls out the bulky black headgear, “what’s this?”

“You haven’t been sleeping.” He says bluntly and wraps his arms across his chest as he fidgets.

Lance snickers and leans forward, “you don’t talk to me for a week and then bring me headphones?”

Keith squints, “me? You’re the one that’s not talking to me!”  
  
Lance shakes his head and holds them up, “what’re they for? My birthday?”  
  
Keith sighs, “sleep. That’s it.”  
  
Lance blinks at him and then blinks back at the gift, he frowns, “I’m still mad at you.”  
  
Keith goes to turn around, “whatever. It’s not a peace offering. I just,”

Lance snorts, “care?”  
  
Keith nods earnestly, “maybe...See, this why I did what I had to.”  
  
“I’m still mad at you.” Lance reiterates and they turn away from each other, “since you’re an idiot.”  
  
Keith huffs and goes to leave, “I did the right thing.”  
  
“You did the safe thing.” Lance states in a loose, wondering tone that hung in the air brightly like a supercharged lightning strike. It was a soft and un-Lance like phrase.

“Enjoy it, okay?”

“Yeah.”  
  
“Yeah,” they turn to leave and Keith wonders if he’s going to get over this. But he has sheets to fold and a coworker to listen to and a young kid that followed him around to deal with.

  
Lance’s eyes are slightly less bruised the next morning. They sit slightly closer together again.


	19. Honesty Is

If Lance was going to be given a questionnaire in the afterlife and it asked him ‘what was the worst trenches he slogged through’: a literal intergalactic war he was at the forefront of, or being a waiter in a restaurant.

He would promptly answer, the intergalactic robot war had breaks. And let him sit down while on the job. Give him intergalactic warfare any day.

While Lance began a very drawn out conversation with his feet that started with ‘yes I know it’s been eight hours’ and his feet responding ‘ _aaaaaaaaahh_ ,’ in a cartoonish wail, they tried to close up for the night.

Lance groans and opens the oven door when he returns to the back, “someone shut this on me.”  
  
His coworker, Kerkmet, kicks him gently, “come on, family in booth ten is ready for the check.” Lance stands up and hangs his head, Kerkmet puts a hand on his shoulder, “almost there."

Lance takes a deep breath in and grows a smile as wide as his face before he goes back into the fray, space tips was still a thing after all.

He goes outside, places the check down, wonders if his feet are bleeding yet, picks up the dishes from a family of five and tries to flirt with the girl at the bar. She waves him off.

He wishes he had an air horn to just yell at the rest of everyone to leave: it was past eleven. They were closed.

A child spits up on his black slacks, the guy eating alone in the middle of the room told him to ‘buzz off’ when he asked him if he was a pirate because that booty must be illegal (it was a forceful ‘no’).

He is positioned by the open oven door again when they have one last customer slowly eating sorbet at glacial pace. It was midnight.

“I am going to throttle him. I am going to pirouette off the ship bow.” Jestut, the stragglers server, pulls on her hanging ears and Lance groans.

“I want to go hooooome,” he hits his forehead on the nearest wall.

“Lunc, Just,” his manager says with a measured patience and their strange accent, “Pleas, wur almust thur.”

Lance nods and takes a deep breath, “I got this Jes.” He says slowly to the raccoon-like girl with grey prickly eyes and dark stripes across her face. “I’ll take over.”

“Forreal?” She asks with wide eyes.  
  
Lance shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets, he ruffles his coworkers short hair, “sure.”  
  
She whoops and throws her smock off without a second thought, Lance takes over her table, and his manager promises him a reward for this.

He breaths in threw his nose and then goes to approach the ancient gentlemen in a tophat.

After cajoling, easing and speaking softly, the old man concedes to wrap up his sorbet in a to-go baggy and go back to his room. Every cell in Lance’s body exhales. He brings the bill, and after much waiting, carole's him out of the ship's restaurant.

“Gud jub kid.” His manager compliments him when Lance goes back into the kitchen and hands him a large bottle.

Lance blinks a couple times and whispers in awe, “space wine.”  
  
His manager winks and Lance smiles wearily, they finish cleaning up and then his manager runs off to sleep for a couple hours before returning here, leaving Lance alone to finish mopping up.

Lance eases himself onto the ground when he’s done, his feet needed a break and they needed it now. He slips his shoes off and sits under the counter, opening the bottle up under aching, burnt fingers.

“Waiter, I need my food pre-chewed, yes ma'am, waiter, my bratty kids want to touch your weird human hair, yes sir, waiter, my alien husband is going into heat- pls bend over and let him mate you, yes sir, server-” Lance makes voices and vents his frustrations to the open air.

He starts tipping the wine into his mouth and a veil of fuzziness covers his brain in a staticy warmth.

“Lance?” Lance thinks he starts hearing things when a voice calls his name, “Lance, goddammit.” A knocking comes at the back door, Lane blinks and sits back up.

“What is it honey?” Lance calls to the ceiling.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?” Keith growls through the thick metal.  
  
Lance sways to the door and tilts his head into the mini window to the outside. He knocks on the metal door, “knock, knock, Keith.”

Keith presses his face closer to the window, “what are you doing? It’s 1:30. Are you locked in there?”  
  
“I said, knock, knock Keitheyboy.”

“Lance. Cranny literally woke me up to go find you, come the hell out of there.” Keith seemed to be on his tiptoes to peer into the locked room.

“Knock to the knock, sweetheart,” he raps on the door once more with his knuckles in quick succession, _tip-tip-tip-tip-tip-tip_ , the noise carries down the empty hallways.

“Fine.” Keith huffs, “but you come out when I answer this.”  
  
“Haven’t you heard? I already came out... Bi af.” Lance laughs at himself and Keith hits his palm to his forehead.

“Who’s there?” Keith asks like his fingernails might be ripped off otherwise.  
  
“Keith is an unfeeling jackass,” Lance sticks his tongue out at him, almost licking the gross window in the process.

“Come on Lance,” Keith almost sounds like he’s going to whine.

“I know. Not my finest.” He says dramatically as puts a hand over his forehead, “I have another one. Knock, knock.”  
  
“Are you going to tell me my hair is stupid?”  
  
“I was thinking: Keith can’t tell up from down, but sure.”  
  
“You are either a mean drunk, or a huge child. It’s been four weeks.”  
  
“Both.” Lance slurs and makes a ‘nanana face.’ “Keith, I have had the longest day of my young and nubile life. Let me have this.”  
  
“Just,” Keith leaned on the door from the outside, “let me in.”  
  
Against Lance’s better judgement, which he was running low on in the fuzzy filter of alcohol, he opens the creaking kitchen door, Keith slips in.

He immediately bops Lance on the nose, “We were worried about you.”  
  
Lance rolls his eyes and slides back under the counter to grasp the bottle, “want some sweet wine? It’s really not so bad, and I’m not even dead from alien bullshit food poisoning.”

“Fine. Give me some of your bullshit alien wine.” Keith puts his hand out and Lance hands over the large glass bottle.

“Aren’t you full of enough bullshit?” Lance huffs and Keith shuffles a little farther away.

“Oh my God Lance, we still have a month left together.” They both sit down on the dark brown tile floor and position themselves under the overhang, hidden, loud.  
  
“Get over it?” Lance sticks his tongue out again, “gimme the wine again when yer done.”

Lance took a deep sip from it, mumbling about how Lance was not the only one with a ‘long day.’ They pass the bottle back and forth, and soon a pretty red highlighter blush spreads across Keith’s cheeks and he is hiccuping.

Lance tells him about how he’s lucky, ‘Lance is the most generous motherfucker out there.’

Keith sighs, and his eyes shine like dark stars in a dim forest. He speaks quietly, in a hush and an exhale that never truly reaches him, “is it really that bad between us?”

Lance turns away and glances up to the ceiling reluctantly, “remember when Hunk tried to make us some new threads, but it turn into a three legged sweater with no neck hole?”  
  
Keith snickers, his features lighting up and Lance’s heart throbbing painfully at the sight, “you still tried to put it on…”  
  
“Of course! Hunk is my liege, my rock, my star. I had to tell him ‘nice job.’” Lance smiles and leans backwards onto the wall, glancing at how the corners of Keith’s mouth were staining purple, “and remember when Shiro mistook the Tanerians gloves as a gift and almost had marry the chief's son? That was wild. He almost became a true space dad.”  
  
Keith was laughing again and Lance doesn’t know why he’s humoring him, “Allura was pissed.”  
  
“She was! She grew like three inches in a minute, like some sort of intimidation instinct.” Lance claps Keith on the back.

They exchange stories from their time on the ship and Lance feels a little prickle of warmth in his chest that he wishes he wasn’t there.

Keith slipped himself next to Lance and Lance lets him, “remember when Pidge tied your shoes together as retribution for making Rover play fetch with your socks? You fell on your face.”  
  
“Dude.” He giggles, “Not cool. Also why not use robots for an actual purpose? Like getting your clothes when you don’t want to stand up.”

  
Keith smiled at him and his eyes are soft, “you’re ridiculous.”  
  
“Is that why you didn’t want me?” It just slips out like a loose baby tooth that had been hurting for months. Keith jerked back, staring anywhere but at Lance.

Keith shakes his head, “of course not.” He squeaked and Lance wants to grab his hand and demand a better explanation.

“Remember when we kissed because we thought it was a game, and damn if that was the worst flirting I’ve done.” Lance murmurs and chugs the last of the wine.

“Remember when that was goddamn fake.” Keith croaks and Lance wonders why whatever is stabbing at Keith’s insides to make him make that face.

Lance snorts, “how could it? Dude. I literally memorized what your hair looked like back at the garrison.”  
  
Keith’s eyes go wide and Lance can see something clicking altogether in his head like clock gears fitting into place. “Why?”  
  
Lance shrugs, “why didn’t you see that? Not that you liked me back anyway.” He knew it was a bitter statement, salted by lemon and sour at the edges.

Keith shook his head, “don’t tell me orphan foster kids who didn’t even want to be there was your type.”  
  
“What?” Lance chuckles, “you thought I was hitting on some other hot-headed guy who challenges entire armies to a fight before he can stop himself? Of course I was into you.” Lance didn’t know why he didn’t make this clear earlier.

Keith leans forward and his breath has a tang of sweet ferment to it, his eyes were curious and he brings his hand up to cradle Lance’s face, Lance leans into it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“I wanted you to,” Lance voice croaks, “want me on your own.”  
  
Keith breath came out in a short gasp, “I did.” He cracks a smile and his free hand pushed Lance’s hair back.

Keith seemed to lean in to kiss him and Lance’s heart jackhammers like it’s doing his mother’s jazzercise routine on crack, “no.” He says because he has to.

He places his fingers over Keith’s lips to push them away. “No.”  
  
Keith blinks and the shadow of hurt overcomes his face, “Oh. Sorry.”  
  
Lance shakes his head, and finds it a night for honesty, “you really hurt my feelings dude. I’m gonna need more than an ‘oops.’”  
  
Keith shifts away and seems to close into himself, “I wasn’t trying to. I just didn’t want...”

“To get hurt?” Lance bites back, but his knees are still pressed into Keith's as he leaned towards him.

Keith doesn’t meet his gaze, “I guess.”  
  
“I know.” Lance nods and feels his insides wilt from Keith pulling away from him.

Keith lifts himself up again, a steely look closing his face into an iron trap, “what then? I can...do something”

  
Lance’s mouth twitches up and he beams, “actually.”  
  
“Something legal. And not stripping.” Keith seems to think, “alright, I’ll consider stripping.”  
  
Lance snorts and leans backwards, “maybe later.” He leans forward and whispers into Keith’s ear, “woo me.”  
  
“What?” Keith turns his face and their lips are inches apart again, “are you a 16th century southern bell? Woo you?”  
  
“Hell yeah.” Lance pumps his fist in the air, “like one of your French girls.”  
  
“What?”

“Anyway, I taught you to ride a bike, and took you to the movies. Totally wooing- didn’t work I guess, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a lil woo. I’m the million dollar baby, baby.”  
  
Keith smirked up at him. “Alright. A million dollars.”

Lance winks and then hiccups, “I am worth it- Fifth Harmony in the year of our Lord 2015.”

Keith bit his lip, face painted red in the low lights, “this is not really my specialty.”  
  
“Sorry buck-o, but Lance Sanchez needs to be caught. Wanted. Damn well TLC.”  
  
He expected Keith to laugh or roll his eyes exuberantly, but he simply stood up and leaned down his pouty lips almost reach his, “Sure. You are worth it.”  
  
Lance’s breath hitches and he seems to began a contract to be wooed. Actually wooed. He gulps dryly, that was new.

Keith stands up unsteadily, “Come on, 17th century madame, we don’t want to be caught here in the morning.”  
  
Lance snorts, “alright, but you are going to have to help me up.”  
  
“Consider this wooing number one.” Lance rolls his eyes and Keith drags him to his feet unevenly.

Lance shakes his head, “no way. Romance Keith, romance! Wuthering Heights... Except not that.”

Keith drags Lance down to his level to tap their heads together, “I’ll think of something.”  
  
Lance bites the inside of his cheek and they lean on each other as they hobble back home, swaying back and forth, and crawl into their separate bunk beds

  
Lance wakes up at 2 in the afternoon the next day, a glass of water and a daisy was on his bed side. It comes with a poorly drawn heart and Lance has to bury his face in his pillow to take in what he gotten himself into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance is usually always the one flirting and going after the other person, so I thought I'd like to see the outcome of when he's the one being persued (since hc he's a huge flustered romantic)


	20. The Wooing of Lance Sanchez

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the score board is back!

_Attempt 1_

Keith found the bouquet by the trashcan. Red, foreign flowers with delicate yellow middles and leaves that were far too thick to be from earth.

He glanced at them in the hallway, carrying sheets in his arms and feeling his mouth grow dry. It had only been a day since their reconciliation had begun and Keith had been avoiding Lance until his brain kicked into some sort of romantic high gear. Of course, he wasn’t sure that part of his brain existed.

He grabs the stems of the plants and whisks them into his arms, dropping off the sheets as fast as possible and strutting to the employee lounge.

The on-board restaurant didn’t open before 3 pm, the passengers using the buffet until then, so Keith knew Lance was passing time in the community room.

He entered the relaxed, spacious room with shuffling feet and what must have been a frightening expression as someone trying to exit saw him and promptly turned the hell around.

Keith takes a deep breath and tries to screw his face up into something pleasant rather than angry- the one where he was trying to repress the rising butterflies in his gut.

Lance was in the middle of a huddle of humanoids, all chatting amiably in their off time. The crowd almost made Keith want to get in a defense position and retreat with his bayard in hand.

Instead, Keith closes his eyes and visualizes Lance’s hurt face on the small spacecraft as Keith pushed him away the first time. He steels himself.

“Lance!” He almost growled, making the group jump as Keith approached them.

He walks stiff-legged, loose-jointed across the room and takes a knee to the metal floor. He thrust the red flowers towards Lance and made eye contact like he wanted to bore a hole in his head.

“When you push the hair back from your face and wrinkle your nose it is…” Keith clenches his hands and a thorn digs into his palm. “The best thing since I discovered men’s magazines.” Lance’s mouth hangs open and Keith gives a sincere smile.

He smothered the bouquet up to Lance’s chest and watched as the other boy grasped at them and his face was tinted a fire truck red.

Keith turns around and departs without another word, he hears an eruption of voices clammering behind him as they question Lance.

“What the hell was that?” One of them says and Keith smiles to himself.

Team desert dweller: 1

 

_Attempt 2_

Lance kept glancing at him all through breakfast the next day, clearing his throat and then turning his head away.

It was somewhat endearing as Lance bit his tongue and tried to say something. Keith waits patiently as he eats with small scoops of raisins and bland oatmeal.

“SO THOSE FLOWERS.” Lance said loudly to the point of making Keith jump and almost choke on his food.

Keith nodded slowly when he processed the sentence, “I gave you flowers.” Keith repeats and waits.  
  
Lance blushed deeply, “I put them in water.”

A slow smile spreads across Keith’s lips and he reflected that may be realizing why Lance tried to flirt with everyone. It could be a little fun.

“Okay.” He brushed up against the nape of Lance’s neck when he passed him to put his dishes away, Lance shivered.

\---------------

Keith fidgeted back and forth when he held his next present in his hands and  waited for Lance outside his place of work.

Keith was not the artistic type, he’d rather fight a deadly robot again, but he had a knife, unlimited numbers of packaged soap on the hotel trolley’s. He made do.

He cut open his thumb no less than two times when he finished his soap art. He wished he could write ‘I tried’ on the outside of it.

He got lost in thought, contemplating what he’d tell Shiro when they got back to the crew. ‘ _Remember that eternal rivalry? Well, I got together with that boy, then broke his heart, then wooed him again shitty soap whittles_.’

“Keith?” Keith snapped out of his thoughts and turned to face a tired looking Lance.

Keith danced from foot to foot and tried to smile, Lance’s eyes go soft.

Keith juts out the next present into his hands, “It’s supposed to be a heart. With a flower on top.” He says gruffly as he described his soap sculpture, a lumpy white sculpture. Lance examines it thoughtfully, turned it over in his hands while Keith itched his wrist, “it’s shitty. I know, you can use it, or not.”

“It’s the best thing, jeez, that is a rose, damn.” Lance declares, Keith stiffens and can’t feel his legs. Lance glanced up, his eyes as bright as dark cave pools of water. He sprouts a large grin.

Keith keeps talking- that was flirting right? “I wanted something for you.” He articulates lamely.

Lance puts his wide hands over Keith’s shoulders and pushes him up against the wall. Keith’s breath hitched and Lance hooked his fingers through Keith’s belt loops. He breathed against the cusp of his ear as Keith felt the cold of the wall on his shoulder blades.  
  
“Okay.” He whispered and Keith froze with his throat closing up on him. Lance let him go and waved as he turned away.

“It’s awesome.” He walked away and Keith went boneless against the wall behind him.

Team blue dabadee dabadie- 1

 

_Attempt 3_

Keith had found a window as large as the wall on the fourth deck, tucked away by the empty dining hall that was closed because of mold.

It was empty as the grave with the sight of space glimmering like a screen of twinkling stars out the window. It is what Keith imagined romantic was like.

Keith grabbed Lance’s wrist and grocery bag and ran them up three flights of stairs.

“Keith where are we going? Is this the wooing?” Lance asked as they climbed, “Because I consider cardio the opposite of that- more like a weird tension with my gym teacher.” Lance complained as they made it up to the empty deck.

Keith shook his head, “you want to be romanced or not? I am bonding with you.”  
  
Lance snickered, “you are so you, oh my God.”  
  
Keith shook his head and took Lance’s wrist, he leads him through the winding halls and presents a canopy of sheets he had ‘borrowed’ and fashioned into a little fort next to the window.

“Oh,” Lance says gently and approaches it. He turns slowly to Keith and his mouth is an open ‘o.’ “Did you steal all these pillows?”  
  
Keith smacks his forehead and sighs. Lance approaches and spins him around in a little giddy dance. “Fuck, Keith.”

Keith grins at the ground and allows Lance to dip him across the floor. He dances him in a little disjointed waltz.

Lance wraps his arms around Keith’s waist and presses him close as he smiles and bends down to bury his face in Keith’s collarbone.

“You're a sap.” Lance teases and Keith huffs and pushes him down into the ivory fort he made of pillows and sheets.

Lance lets out what could only be a giggle and Keith lies down next to him down the sight of the universe next to them. Lance nods outside. “That is beautiful.”

They admire space and Lance sighs longingly. Lance creeps their hands close together and it’s intimate in the way secrets and cramped buses are.

Lance blows on his hands and Keith notices him rub them together. He kept side-eyeing Keith as they reclined in the small fort. “You took this seriously.”  
  
“Yeah.” Keith says bluntly and watches Lance without blinking. He quirks a grin, “weren’t you the one singing ‘baby I’m worth it’?”  
  
Lance seemed to shiver and draw closer, “Dude. I don’t always believe myself.”  
  
Keith smiles down at his thin frame and the shy furrow of his brow. Keith brushes his hair back and shakes his head. “You are fucking cold.”

Lance snorts. “Oh my God. They don’t even heat this level loser.”  
  
Keith grabs his hands and feels the prickling ice against his touch. “Well, I’m fine.”  
  
Lance nods, “you’re like a furnace. What the fuck.”  
  
Keith grabs his hands tighter, they are a tingling cold over Keith's heated hands.  He rubs Lance's hands between his grasp and taps their heads together. “Shut up and let me stop you from getting frost bite.”  
  
They lean in and Lance jokes about absorbing his life force through stealing his body heat, they sit even closer together. The awe of the silent universe is right next to them and Lance rests on Keith’s shoulder and they remain very, very still as he held his hands.

team 'we make a good team': 10+

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo, we up for a NSFW chapter? 'Cause rating's going up next week


	21. Is This Cake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I promised smut, but I wanted some more build up first, may or may not delete this chapter and combine it with the next one this weekend.
> 
> But until then the chapter is early!

Lance didn’t know exactly what happened. Something in him felt like his plan had simply worked, the other half that was a drop-dead romantic said that is was graceful inevitability.

He told Cranny and their droid roommate to beat it that night.

Keith had continued to lay on the wooing, he brought Lance a handful of snow from above deck, the ice planet they passed over had blasted it onto the ship. Passengers had gawked at the fluffy attraction and Keith had somehow got his hands on space-snow.

He handed it to him without blinking. “You like water.” He stated bluntly and Lance made a short sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

“You don’t have to take it.” Keith retreats, Lance gathered it in his hands quickly.

“I like water.” He affirmed with a hint of teasing.

The present melted in his hands and onto his shoe laces before they knew what to do with it, they laugh and a contentment mixes with ache in his chest. Lance at that moment had the gears in his head chanting: more, more, more. _Lock this boy down before ‘emotions’ scare him away again_.

That night he had work off, a nice reprieve for his feet and leaving him free to make his bed, think too much and feel the jitters rising in his gut like churning butter. He was ready for the next level.

“Okay Lance, smooth, practiced, confident. You’ve been preparing for this like, always.” He pep-talks himself and slaps both of his cheeks into a rosy red color. He reaches his bed and reclines in it, posing like a french pin up girl in his mind with his hips pushed out. He wore his low cut v-neck shirt and made a patented dreamworks face™- an eyebrow in the air like he just didn’t care.

He waits.

The time slips by like a grating sunburn scraped across his insides and making his mouth taste red, giddy, overstimulated. 

He took off his shirt, he puts it back on, he pushed down his pants so his hip bones made a precise ‘V’ down into his boxers. He slicked his hair back and then pulled it back down.

He rolled over on the bed and nearly fell off.

“Keith,” He groaned into his pillow and kicked his feet up and down.

“What?” Lance jumps as the door opens. He almost breaks his neck jerking upright and splaying his legs out like a dog in heat waiting to be mounted.

Keith eyes him, his hair looked shiny and damp from the steam of the laundry room, he had a deep indent his brow and promptly took off his work shirt. Keith seemed too distracted to comment oh him.

“How was your day?” Lance asks unevenly as his brain tries to keep up. Was this seduction? When he was 6 he thought sex was a type of cake, so maybe if he just thought of it as cooking. With his dick.

Keith shakes his head and tosses his black shirt across the room, “Someone came and complained at us. Us. The laundry staff that doesn’t even make the beds.”  
  
“That’s...too bad.” Lance consoles and leans up against the bed frame, sticking his chest out.

“Shane basically skipped worked again, so we had to pick up the extra slack, and oh, one of the machines broke. Soaked the whole floor. So there's that.” Keith was grumbling and pointed down at his wet shoes. Lance usually appreciated when Keith opened up to talk carelessly at him instead of in a guarded grunts. If only it wasn’t at that moment.

"That sucks. If you want," Lance drapes himself across the bed and sticks his bottom lip out. “I could soak _your_ floor.”

“What?” That got Keith to pause in changing clothes for the day, he blinks. “Why are you lying like that? It looks uncomfortable.”

Lance rolled over and pulled up his shirt, “I guess I’m just...so hot in these clothes.”  
  
Keith makes a face at him with his eyebrows arched upwards. “Do you need an aspirin or something.”  
  
Lance nearly tore his own hair out. “You know...We’ve been becoming closer lately.” He simpers and loses some of his ‘sexy’ tone.  
  
“What’s that have to do with aspirin?” Keith was as dense as a log made of dark matter.

Lance gives him an unblinking stare and opens his mouth and then closes it again. He scratches his wrist and shifts from side to side, he should know Keith by now.

Lance slips onto the floor and gets down on one knee in front of him. “I like you right?”

Keith’s mouth falls open and his eyes go wide. “Lance.” He chokes out, his pupils covering his measured brown eyes. "I mean, yes."

“So, you know. We should talk about the b word. Together, being my b word.”  
  
“Bitch?”  
  
“Fuck, Keith, _no_. Oh my God, boyfriend.” Keith’s mouth was stilling hanging open and his hands were clenched, Lance continues. “Your wooing was A+, genuine effort, I want into your black hot-topic pants.”

Keith stumbled backwards and hit the wall. Lance awkwardly fell down into a criss-cross applesauce, trying to think of something to say. They stare at each other.

Finally, Keith crawls over on his knees, an unreadable expression on his face. “Are you messing with me?” He says seriously without blinking. "Because you...know how I feel."

Lance gulps and shakes his head earnestly, “nah. Not messing with you. Isn't that obsv.s?” He hunches his shoulders over. “I mean it, I like you. For real. More than real- a fantasy. You, me, hand-holding the whole dream.”

Keith finally broke into his first sneaking smile, “hand-holding? Don’t let your ultimate fantasies go wild on me.”  
  
Lance’s face goes red and he manages a soft smile. "Wildest fantasies. You got me."

Keith seemed to take a deep breath, "So...?" Keith looks down on the floor.

"Or we could have sex." Keith sputters at the that and Lance suspects if he had been drinking something he would have spit it out. "Just saying!"

"Lance," Keith's eyes were shining and something earnest glowed beneath. "Don't fuck with me."

Lance bats his eyes and throws his hands up, "what do you think I was doing like ten minutes ago? Grade A seduction, it's not even a cake."

"Oh," Keith tilts his head forward curiously, "I didn't notice."  
  
"I Knooow," Lance whines. 

"Look," Keith moved closer to him until their knees touch, Lance holds his breath as to not scare away a wild animal, Keith studies him. “Do actually want that, with _me_?” Keith said it in the way people say ‘do you know what I am?’

Lance gulped and played with his hands. He catches his eye and takes in the gears in Keith’s head moving like toxic clockwork. “I know you’re still worried about proximity, that I’m just doing this since you're the closest warm body.” Lance presses his hand to his chest, “but feel this.”  
  
Lance grabs Keith’s hand and positions across Lance’s speeding heart beat, trembling like a drum line at a marching band competition.

“I liked you before this whole shit started. Memorized your mullet, followed you into a secret government facility, the whole shebang.”

Keith chuckled, "Romance."  
  
"I'm serious!"

Keith breath comes out unsteadily, "Okay." He hums. "I know. I...like you too."  
  
"Duh." Lance says flatly with an eye roll, and Keith kicks him in the gut, but a smile stretched across his face and both of his hands bunched his shirt. He drew him into a hard kiss.

He takes him firmly on the mouth, drawing Lance into a warm scent of detergent and fresh sheets. They stagger off of the cold floor to their feet, Keith pushes Lance backwards until his knees hit the bed and he falls onto the mattress. Keith clambers on top of him and straddles his hips, their mouths meet.

"You wanna?" He breaths into his neck.

"Yeah." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: 18


	22. Is This Cake Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is a little late! Preparing for midterms was kicking my ass over the weekend, but here it is! 
> 
> Last chapter and this one were supposed to be one, so um, perspective does not shift.
> 
> we're also just gonna count this as one kiss. A really big one.

The bed dipped underneath him as Keith eased Lance down and straddled his waist, his teeth nipped at his lower lip and he opened up to a burning kiss that made his senses spark like frayed wires. Lips, and ash and the taste of dampness on top of something more, that moment of being wanted. Truly wanted.

Keith touched him and he shuddered. He pressed him down into the bed and Lance hungrily arched up into him, hands in his hair, on his skin, trailing down his back and clawing at his biceps.

A delicious burn climbed Lance’s pelvis as the kisses trailed his neck and latched onto his Adam's apple, sucking an indent into his salted skin as he let out a thin throaty moan.

“Cranny…” Keith suddenly muttered as his hands paused in pushing up his shirt.

Lance shook his head, “I sent him away for the night.”  
  
Keith gave a half smile, his eyes lighting up, “you were planning this.”  
  
Lance made a face and arched his eyebrows, “what part of ‘trying to seduce you’ did you not process?”  
  
“All of it apparently.” Lance dragged him up into a sharp kiss that dug Lance’s hipbone up into Keith’s pelvis. They start to breath heavily from the contact, Lance rutting up against Keith’s thigh as he played with the hairs on the back his neck.

“I suppose I’ll just have to get it through your head then.” He croons and his fingers start to dance over his bare chest.

Keith let an exhale of a laugh as Lance tentatively explores the inches of his body available: the curve of his squared shoulders and the dimples on his chest that marked his pectorals. The sweet expanse of his sunset almond skin that Lance licked and took in with reverence.

Keith’s breath hitched as he worked his way over his left nipple.

“L-Lance.” His voice trembled and Lance bounced his eyebrows up and down as he sucked on the hard nub. Swirling it in his mouth and making Keith's breath hitch before he let go.

“Yes?” He asked virtuously as he brought his other hand down to wrap around Keith’s right hip.

“Fuck.” Keith breaths and Lance practically breaks his own face with a grin.

“That’s the plan.”

Keith threads his fingers through his short hair to pull his head back, encompassing him in another insistent kiss that sends his thoughts sprinting for the hills.

Keith mumbles something into his mouth, lost words that pray to someone else’s God and hold Lance in place. Lance rubs circles into his hips and Keith nips his ear and presses kisses down his jawline.

Then he follows the curve of his throat with his tongue, tracing Lance’s narrow chest, lifting his black v-neck over his head and continuing on his path of destruction. His tongue dips and digs across his muscles making Lance arch off the bed from the soft, wet probes.

Keith makes a lazy line down the center of his body and he bobs his head down until his fingers are ghosting over Lance’s happy trail and his mouth biting at the jut of his hip bone.

“Ah, ah, Keith?” Lance says somewhere between a question and a plea.

Keith presses his smile into the curve of his hipbone, “So, I’m not so great with words, right?”  
  
“Alright...Noted, historians are not shocked, just saying, but appreciate the gesture and will take it down in the footnotes or something, properly cited, Keith Gyeong, in the year 6969- when Lance got laid and-hh!” He’s cut off by Keith nuzzling the heat in his shorts and Lance breaking off into a high-pitched gasp.

Keith chuckles and Lance almost kicks him, and by ‘almost’ he means does not at all because Keith opened his mouth and started mouthing at Lance’s arousal through his jeans.

“Keith, Keith, ohmggodd.” His voice warbles and he squeezes his eyes shut, “don’t stop.”

“God, you are noisy.” Keith pauses to say and Lance whines and shifts his hips. Keith takes the opportunity to unzip his trousers and present the straining top of Lance’s blue boxers.

He sucks on the bulge in Lance’s shorts, making him mewl and shift back and forth in place, “damn, hhuhn, okay.”

He looks up at the top of the bed to not stare at the embarrassing wet spot sprouting in his boxers and also actually avoiding making like a bad period and _coming early._

Lance gently puts his hands in Keith’s hair, soft and feathery it’s like all the nights he stared at it or absently braided it while they watched an ancient movie in a field, or had his virginity taken on an alien ship on a bunk bed.

He squeezes his eyes shut and Keith licks the outline of his length, Lance controls himself to not thrust up into his face and shudders from head to foot instead.

Keith pauses and looks up questioningly as Lance opens his eyes a slit, Lance nods, Keith slowly eases his boxers and jeans off his hips like a slow motion effect in a a Vin Diesel flick.

It’s agonizing and Lance is panting when his cock springs free, leaking pre-cum from the head and shining with spit in the low light. _Think about baseball and your naked grandmother_ Lance instructs himself as Keith wipes his mouth and looks at it with an indescribable attentiveness.

Lance situates himself and kicks off the rest of his pants with some frustration, having to grab onto Keith halfway through to stop him from toppling off the edge of the bed.

They laugh briefly and Lance presses a sweet kiss to the side of his mouth. “Some weather we’re having.” He says cheekily and Keith rolls his eyes and pushes on his shoulder.

“It’s called the vacuum of space.” He says dryly and Lance tries not to go completely red from head to toe as he lay naked underneath a pretty boy.

“Really? I heard it was 50% chance of _head_ winds.” Keith groaned and Lance snickered to himself, “come on, we’ll be fine. _Lightning rods_ are a good insurance.” He points downwards.

“Please don’t say it’s you-”  
  
“It’s my dick.” 

Keith sighs and goes to unbutton his jeans, “you are lucky you’re cute.”

“Oooh,” Lance leans forward and ooh’s, “you think I’m cute. How embarrassing.”  
  
“Alright, never mind, you’re lucky _I’m_ kindhearted.” Keith gets up and Lance follows him, pressing himself up against his back and helping him slide his pants lower.

“Say it again.” He says roughly with a smile.

“I’m kindhearted? I thought that was self evident by now.”

“We’re going to discuss that statement at later date once I collect my proof of you threatening to glue my eyelids shut if I wink one more time at the girl at the bar.” Lance says referring to a certain night on Zanzabar.  
  
“I was jealous.” Keith says simply.  
  
“Well that’s adorable.”

Lance nuzzles the back of his neck and then Keith turns around in his arms and presses him close, “let me get my pants off already, I’m trying to keep this going.”

“Too late, you’re ruined our first time. The magic was lost when you didn’t just strip off your clothes in one go when you walked into the room.” Keith frowned at that and then opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Lance leaned down and kissed his eyelids. “Just kidding.”

They kiss gently in the low glow of the room, and some of the heat is lost but not the need to be closer, further, together.

Keith pushes him back and finishes rolling his pants off to present his black boxer-shorts. Lance presses the palm of his hand against his erection and Keith let’s out a stifled moan.

Lance nods appraisingly, “thick, hot, hard, I’m liking what I feel. The auctioneer's will consider taking item into the love cave.”

“Lance,” Keith warns before his voice breaks off into another breathy groan as Lance palms him through his shorts.

“Just give me a moment.” Lance reaches to under the bed and takes out some of the olive oil he had hustled out of the kitchen.

He watched Keith go slightly red in the face when he brought it out, “We don’t have to…” He starts and then holds it in the air tentatively, “Or not right away, we can...take our time.”  
  
Keith shakes his head and spreads his hands across his chest, “I’ll do whatever you want. But,” he bit his lip and caught him in a bright kiss like slow-licking flames. _But he wanted him._

Lance lay back down and nodded, “I want this.” It was like 1776 and a declaration was being bled from Thomas Jefferson’s pen, except Britain was invading his ass and the war was actually in space, ectera, ectera.

Lance makes steady eye contact with Keith as he dips two fingers into the clear yellow liquid and brings up to his entrance, pressing one finger into himself delicately.

He groans and rolls his eyes into the back of his head as he probes further in, he can hear Keith’s breaths go ragged as he watches him take himself.

Lance adjusts his hips and then spreads his legs farther apart, he takes his time, finally slipping another slick finger inside and getting used to the familiar feel of opening himself up.

Keith made throaty noises and Lance jumped when he felt rough hands trail down his rib cage like they were playing notes off an instrument.

“I,” Keith made a sound, silver in the night and his eyes hovering over every piece of him, Lance bit the inside of his cheek and spread himself wider to fit a third slick finger in.

“Just a moment.” He whispers hoarsely, his eyes crinkling as his insides thrum with a building excitement.

Keith watches him a deep hum and touches his sides lightly, “when you’re ready.”  
  
Lance should not have felt his cock twitch from that little statement and his dark eyes trailing his body, but the heartbeat of need thrums through him.

He nods his head loosely, “Keith,” He makes a garbled noise, Keith inches his boxers off of his thighs and Lance mentally high fives himself. “I’m ready, yes, God.” He mumbles and Keith dips his hands in the make-shift lube, layering it on his length and Lance shivers.

“Hell yes,” he says through his teeth, he removes his fingers and whines slightly from the new feeling of lack.

Keith kisses his temple and then his lips gently, it’s too soft to the effect it felt like it could break his heart, terribly weighted and cruelly gentle, Lance bites up into it and Keith breaths into his mouth.

Keith grabs onto his hips, “say the word.”  
  
“42 cowboys.” Lance responds in one breath and Keith positions himself in front of him.  
  
“Okay. Now shut up.”

“Oh come on, nothing sexier than a rodeo.”  
  
Keith winks, “sounds like someone’s seen Brokeback Mountain.”  
  
“But neither of us die!” Lance says quickly and Keith gives a throaty laugh and makes Lance breaks into a shy smile at the sound, “just...make love to me like one of your French girls already.”

Keith smiles down at him with his lips slightly parted and hair down in loose strands that frame his face, “okay.”

Lance blushes and Keith kisses him again with the feather light touch and presses in, Lance tosses his head back at the dull burn, the head of his cock opening him up slowly. “Ah,” He huffs.

“This okay?” Keith sounded like he concentrating.

A rumble of pleasure comes from his chest, “Yeah. It’sgood. Really good, keep, uh.” Keith eased into him inch by inch, increasing the slow stretch until Lance is squirming and arching off the bed.

“Move,” he finally implores in one breath, but Keith shakes his head and insists on the build up until he is all the way up to the hilt.

“Keith, oh, ah,” he was making nothing but breathy noises at that point and Keith seems lost in his own world as he closes his eyes and moans very slightly.

Then he started to pull out, created a slow rhythm that took the both of them into a building pressure. Lance babbled incoherently and Keith leaned over him while Lance traced the sweat down his face.

“You, ah, you are,” he wrapped his legs around Keith’s waist more firmly, “so hot.” Being opened so delicately and filled made his head buzz and lick his senses into a frenzy.

He whimpers and Keith starts to pick up speed, becoming more erratic and needy as he drove into him. 

A familiar tension began to build in his abdomen, and he called out Keith’s name along with maybe his own for good measure, “I’mclose.” He calls out despite himself.

“Good.” Keith grunts and wraps his hand around Lance’s cock, firmly and pumping him up and down as he fucked him.

Lance saw fireworks before he knew which way was up, his voice riding itself raw on a wave of pleasure and releasing long tendrils of white across his stomach as he climaxed.

He clenched around Keith who barely made a noise as he spilled himself inside of him in turn, a momentary gasp and clench of his eyes and Lance can feel himself filled up with the gooey substance.

Keith collapses on top of him and Lance sits in the shine of a halo of afterglow and satisfaction. There was one less virgin space boy in the world.

Keith curls up across him and Lance kisses him across the nose and laughs, “damn.” He whispers warmly.

  
Keith nods and they wrap their sweaty bodies around each other and promise to clean up in just a moment, they just needed a moment. They cling to each other firmly in the small bed and Lance’s eyes flutter shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiss count: the chapter counts as one atm, 19, and like then some


	23. Petnames Don't Stop a Mob

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mild blood and injury

Keith should have seen this coming. That’s what he tells himself as he contemplates the back of his hand in the middle of the void of space. He should have seen the inevitable coming at them like a runaway train driven by a two-toed sloth.

He sighs and closes eyes, trying to pretend they were not stranded in the middle of nowhere. Again.

 

_48 Hours Earlier_

Keith was making out with Lance in their room. He could taste the mint of his gum he had been chewing, and feel his heartbeat drumming a rhythm into his fingertips. Lance’s demanding mouth on mouth on his and Keith got to have this, this was actually his.

It felt unreal and he buries his hand in Lance’s lengthening hair, trying to find every way to make the other boys breath hitch and pulse surge in his wrists.

Lance pushes right back up into him, putting his hand under Keith’s shirt, lifting up the fabric slowly to explore the sinews of his muscles, Keith pants.

“Tired?” Lance teases and Keith makes a curt smile.

“Just getting started.” He tugs on his ear, “If you can keep up.”  
  
Lance’s eyes lit up, “I’m always up to a challenge.” He pushes his back up against the wall and put his hand back up his shirt, lifting it almost all to his armpits and kissing his solar plexus.

The automatic door opens.

Keith freezes and jerks his head back so fast that he hits his head on the metal wall behind them.

“Ow.” Keith tries touch the back of his head.

“Cranny.” Lance scolds at the cabin boy at the door. He was wide-eyed and his gaze darts back and forth between Keith’s exposed sides and his face.

Keith realizes his purple plating was showing, he quickly pushes away from Lance and lets his shirt fall. “We’re doing older-kid stuff.” Lance tried to explain.

Cranny’s mouth turns from a perfect ‘O’ into a smile and Keith exhales. “Sure. Older kid stuff. I know all about that.” He dips his head slowly and whispers. “S-E-X.” He spells it out in the way only kids can.

Lance snorts. “You got us. Alien health ed is top notch on this floating ship.”  
  
Cranny skips inside to his bunk and tuts at him, “yeh. Soon Keith will lay the eggs and weird 'human' young will lay siege to the passengers.”

Lance laughs and his eyes light up, as easy going as ever. They discuss the coming end of the ship, then the cosmos and then all of the known universe after Keith's eggs hatch.

Keith rolls his eyes and gets lost in thought, touching his side lightly to feel the soft heat that always emanated from the spot.

He looks at the ground and turns to put his shoes on and button his jeans.

“Did you hear me Keith? You’re going to have to take pre-natal soon.” Lance stretched, “for Cthulhu, the underworld terror.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Keith says dryly and puts his hair back up, he glances at Cranny who stares back at him curiously, probingly. “Gotta get to work.”

Lance trailed after him, “I’ll walk you there!” He chirps as he strides in his direction, both of them leaving Cranny to his own devices.

Lance follows him like a lovesick puppy, babbling about anything and everything. Keith smiles to himself as they round the corner.

“God, kids amirite?” Lance says offhandedly, “Can’t live with ‘em and...can’t live with ‘em especially when you’re horny.”

“Is that so? We could finish.”

He’s seven minutes late for work when he ends up making out with Lance in the hallway. This time however, he is sure to keep his shirt down.

 

***************

Keith should have been suspicious right away, or at least, more alert than he usually was. He was simply a little distracted by what he would call something of a ‘honeymoon.’

They sat in the cafeteria and he could feel Lance’s heat radiating next to him, his hand brushing against his every now and then trying to feed him their weird bread-pudding for dinner.

“Sugar pop.” Lance offers as he eats.  
  
“No.” Keith rolls his eyes.

“Baby face.”  
  
“Do you want to be the worst couple in any given space?” He eyes him, though he’s smiling.

“Hermit hottie, best-dressed-desert-dweller, my pants gremlin.”  
  
Keith turns slowly, “pants gremlin?”  
  
Lance winks, “you know. Since you get into my pants.”  
  
Keith pinches the bridge of his nose, “Can we not be one of those couples that has pet names? You can be Lance and I’ll be Keith, you’re boyfriend.”

“One, not a chance, you are going to be Korean-shortbread. Since you’re short.”  
  
“By like, two inches!”

“Too late.” Lance nuzzles his neck, and Keith is smiling to himself. He feels a shiver run down his spine.

He detaches himself and looks around the room. A pair of silent dark eyes are focused on him from across the cafeteria, one of the towel boys he thinks, and a rock-alien in only shorts. Keith blinks and tries to look away.

Cranny sit next to a small gathering of other life forms and whispers in one of their ears, it was a sentry.

Keith gulps and racks his brain, maybe they could just dislike pda, maybe there could be space homophobia, maybe they were judging his bangs. There were other options.

“Did you even hear my point number two Keith?” Lance was still obliviously talking to him.

Keith blinks and turns to him. “No.”

Lance huffs and tugs on his sleeve. “The last thing you said. Say it again, I want to hear it. The B-word.”  
  
“Blow job.”  
  
“I hate you.” Lance folds his arms across his chest.

Keith threads their fingers together. “Boyfriend. You’re my,” color rises in his cheeks. “Boy-fri-end. Happy?”

“Yes.” Lance beams like the sun just came out and Keith makes no effort to worry him with any ship tensions.

 

**************

 

It happened on Keith’s way back from the communal showers.

He luckily was already dressed (no fun getting his ass-kicked butt naked) and he was towel-drying his hair as he walked down the hallway.

He frowned at his feet and itched his right side again, something crawls on the back of his neck.

“Scanning subject, scanning subject.” A metallic voice rings down the hallway behind him.

Keith spins around in one fluid motion, his eyes going wide and a pulse jamming through his throat.

“Scanning subject.” Cranny was riding on top of a cruise sentry that’s green beam was flitting over Keith up and down.

Cranny had a ‘v’ indent between his brow and his lips turned down into something that almost resembled a snarl. Keith remembers when he used to follow him around like a star-struck little sibling.

“What are you doing,” Keith says slowly as his mouth grows dry, but he knew what they were doing.

“Scan complete.” The robotic voice returns. “68% unknown species of a primate order, 32% Galra DNA.”

Keith freezes and feels like every nightmare he had since he was seven was converging on one moment.

Cranny’s eyes go wide in an unmistakable fury, “So it was true. That purple fuzz wasn’t some sort of disease. No wonder we’ve never heard of ‘human’ before.”  
  
Keith takes a step back. “It’s not like that.” He says firmly, “I was raised on earth. I am a human, I’m not like them.”  
  
“Like what? Murderers, come to infiltrate a pleasure cruise, enslave another group, ransack more free peoples.” His voice was escalating. “I don’t think so.”

“We can talk.”  
  
“Get him!” The sentry holds up a blunt weapon.  
  
Keith pivots to the left and goes to book it down the hallway, a figure steps out from behind the corner and blocks his path.

He scrambles to back up and reaches for his pocket. He flinches when he realizes he left his bayard in his room. He slowly retreats back in the other direction toward the sentry and Cranny- who seemed to be talking into a communicator on his wrist.

“Let’s think this through,” Keith says evenly, though he is widening his stance and putting his fists up.

More figures hustle down the hallway, mostly low-level staff and some familiar faces. They whisper amongst themselves, ‘a Galra,’ ‘a spy,’ ‘are we safe?’ ‘don’t be stupid, of course we’re not safe.’

Keith’s heart drops but his resolve hardens. His nostrils flare and he keeps his eyes on Cranny. “Fine. You want to go? Let’s go.”  
  
One of the rock aliens punches him in the gut and falls to his knees before he manages to roll back to his feet unsteadily. He always knew one day he’d have to fight for his life.

He was outnumbered, he got a quick job into his coworker who kept skipping out of work anyway, and took out a soft goo-monster with one kick.

But they kept coming.

“Hang him!”

“Take him out!”

The crowd rustled and surged forward, someone had a taser-gun and jammed the butt of it into Keith’s face, a stream of blood erupts from his nose and he falls backwards into the wall.

He manages to duck the next strike and maneuver to the side, wiping at the gush of gore that ran down his face. He puts his hands back up and makes a mindless roar.

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” He roundhouse kicks the nearest creature, a bat-feline, and they sprawl backwards.

“We do!” Cranny says with a high-pitched wail.

“Galra aren’t welcome amongst free people!” Another voice chimes in.

Then someone sweeps his feet out from under him and Keith collapses to the floor and takes a brutal kick to his ribs. He tries to get back up, and fumbles towards the ground from the splitting ache.

He looks up at the ceiling, “Oh God.” He’s not sure how much more of this he can take.  
  
A laser blast streaks the air and strikes the rock-alien off his feet, sending him flying sideways and saving Keith from another kick to the ribs.

“Fuck, fuck all of you.” A familiar voice curses them out and a stream of blasts disperses the crowd as Lance sends them flying.

Keith wobbles back to his feet, Lance pummels his way through the crowd and his eyes go wide as his finds the other boy.

Pain must be written on his face as Lance grabs at his wrist in a hurry. “Come on.”  
  
They streak down the hallway as Keith wipes at his nose and Lance makes a frantic dash for a utility closet.

“You’re going to be okay.”  
  
“Tell me that when we’re not being pursued by a lynch mob.”

Lance takes him in his arms and rushes him to the third floor deserted restrooms. “You’re going to be okay.” It sounded like a plea rather than a promise and Keith latches onto his side.

  
“Thanks.” Lance just shakes his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One reason I started this story was to practice my action scene writing skills, so here we are! Also, I wanted to make Lance dash in like a hero, guns ablazing, I love it.
> 
> also...I think I'll keep the title (tho 'The Art of Being Stranded' could be a cool name) despite the fact the chapters and kiss count have become sadly moot (we are above 26 kisses and chapters are going to go beyond 26, oops)


	24. Marooned

_3 Hours Later_

The hoverboard they had commandeered managed to propel them all the way to the nearest asteroid.

Securing the space suits to eject themselves into the cosmos was easy enough, the running for their lives was less so. Lance was still winded from taking three flights of stairs with a mob pursuing them.

They got away.

“What if we,” Lance put palms up, “Wrote help. In the rock.” He offered and Keith just glanced at him blankly through his helmet. It was a silent no.

“What if,” Lance chewed on his lip, “smoke signals, a fire? No, no fire in space.” He racked his brain, bouncing his leg up and down and tugging on the tether they were using to stay connected to the actual asteroid.

“We could consider…” He lay back down on the rock, “Praying?”  
  
Keith laid down next to him. “Let me get the flying spaghetti monster on the phone, or the Greek God of lost astronauts. We’re open to divine intervention.” He called up into the night sourly.

Lance poked him in the shoulder, “Don’t be bitter, Mr. Totally-Bitter. We have to like hope and junk, and sarcasm is not a lubricant for that.”  
  
Keith sighed, fogging up the glass in front of him, “We’re stuck. Again. But with no resources this time.” Lance hummed back, “and _don’t_ say we still have each other.”

“Well, cranky, I have a whiner named Keith and like a chill from this lousy insulation.” He points to his gloves and rubbed his hands together in his suit for some friction. He glanced back down on the monitor on his wrist: two more hours of oxygen.

Keith reached for his hand and took it in his, it was surprisingly warm. “Sorry,” Keith breathed lowly, “I just...Wish I hadn’t made this happen. We could be home now.”

Lance’s eyes softened, “Those fuckers are the ones to blame.”  
  
“No. We’ve seen the Gallra, we know people need to protect themselves from them, they were scared.” Keith turned his head away and Lance grabbed onto his fingers tighter.

“But not you! That’s not _you_.” He tried to drive that home, “Sure you’re a punk with an itchy fist, but you’re still the opposite of say uh, evil warmongers.”

“Sure.” Keith glances back at him, a sad smile playing across his features. “Thanks.”  
  
Lance tilted his head down and tapped their helmet together, “This is a kiss by the way.”  
  
Keith chuckles, “I’ll keep that in mind,” He turns over and tries to warm both of Lance’s hands in between his, “when the suffocating bleakness of space gets us.”  
  
Lance rolls his eyes, “See? That’s what we got to work on, the Hot Topic manager speeches.”  
  
Keith taps their helmets together again, “this is a smack by the way.”  
  
Lance gives a crooked grin and shakes his head, “No it’s not.”  
  
Keith sighs, “Okay.” He smiles, “You’re right.”

They sit in the vacuum of the copper-tasting expanse of stars and rocks and a distant cruise ship that was growing farther and farther away.

“Hey, you know how we’re running out of oxygen, and our nine lives might be spent?” Lance says conversationally as he tried to look him in the eye.  
  
Keith blinks, “Sure.”  
  
“Well,” Lance takes a deep breath, “I have something to say then.”

“Okay?”

“I have to say it now since it’s important.”  
  
“Wait,” Keith’s eyes go wide and his finger squeeze down over Lance’s. “No.”

“I lo-”  
  
“Lance, no. I’m already,” Keith’s face was flushed red as a poppy flower in may, “ _Lance_.” It was desperate, like last words of someone before an elevator closed or bouquet was thrown.

“Too late!” Lance leaned forward, “I love my cranky b-”  
  
“I’m serious.” Keith stumbled over his words and Lance threw his arms in the air.

“I love you!”

Keith buried his helmet in his hands and seemed to curl up on himself.

“Come on,” Lance nudged on his shoulder, “I love you!” He stood up and shouted into the void: “Hey! Listen up, I love Keith Gyeong! In the real way, with flowers and hearts and minstrels playing.”

Keith got up next to him, head hung, and words wobbling out of his mouth, “I,”

Lance turned around and looked up at Keith’s misty eyes, “Are you crying?” He asks gently as he reaches his hand up to touch the place where Keith's cheek would be.

“No,” Keith says in a rattling breath, tears leaking out of his eyes. “No, this is...Lance, ugh.”  
  
Lance tries to hold his hand again, he smiles brightly. “It’s alright.”  
  
Keith shakes his head, “I don’t think you get it.”  
  
Lance nods his head and wraps him in a clunky hug, “You don’t have to say it back.”  
  
Keith hugged him tightly and mumbled something into his chest, sweet and pretty against where his beating heart would be.

Lance glanced at his oxygen monitor and the timer was ticking down to three minutes left, he sighs. “I love you.”  
  
Keith hiccuped and made more incomprehensible noises.

Lance was accepting that he had a good run, he had a family and fun friends, a boyfriend even, and was a magic-lion-robotman driver. Not too bad before he was 21.

_Whhhrrrrrrrrr_

Lance blinks as he distinguishes the whirring sound of an engine, the unmistakable buzz of a ship, they turn around in tandem. “Ahaha!” Lance jumps up and down, almost floating away as he sees a red, long building rising in the distance. “Keith, Keith.” He tugs on his shoulder and points.

“I see it.” Keith says in awe.

“We're not goners. Help!” Lance called out, “Help! Help! We’re stuck.”  
  
“What if they’re not friendly?” Keith says with shifting eyes.  
  
“Dude.” Lance says seriously. “ _Dude_.”  
  
“I see your point.” They wave and yell, but the building seemed to be making beeline right towards them anyway.

  
“Woo!” Lance jumped in the air, “They’re coming for us, right for us. The guardian angel of Voltron is real.”  
  
The building sweeps in to face them and a honeyed light spills out from the open door. A girl stands in the entrance way, “I’ve been looking for you! Do you folks need a ride?”  
  
They nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they're almost home I swear
> 
> also, here's a silly indie playlist for the whole fic: http://8tracks.com/insomniacarrest/space-adventures-and-other-moves-in-bad-flirting
> 
> edit: !!! there is some wonderful fanart for this chapter http://www.webphoto.co/media/1365262418804012024_3457850845  
> I hope this is the correct artist! Please comment if it's not :)


	25. Ginger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry this is late from the usual sunday update, it was a bit of a rough weekend, but we are in the home stretch :)
> 
> the story is now novel length at 50,000+ words! Which is super cool and I'm excited as he reach 3,000 kudos, which also a lot :0, thank you all for reading!
> 
> I am borrowing Ginger from the original series, I haven’t seen the first Voltron but snooped around the wikipedia until something came up. She is not much like her counterpart in the show though!

A figure stood in the doorway bathed in mustard tinted light, Keith would call it a religious experience if he still wasn’t in the thralls of space nihilism.

Lance grabbed his hand and tugged him forward, properly them towards the light and the square building with little windows and a neon sign on the front.

“Yoo-hoo!” He waved at her with his hand above his head and she waved back.

“Hi!” The young woman cheered, she had chin-length dirty blonde hair and curious eyes over a face-splitting smile. She wore a red apron and white shirt.

Keith narrowed his eyes, “what are we doing?” He hissed at Lance, trying to stop their momentum, which was a fruitless task.

“Hitch-hiking.” He beamed back at him and Keith’s heart did a little dance to the tune of Lance’s face in his direction. Goddamnit.

“Seriously?” Keith arches an eyebrow up with a frown.

“Have a little faith.” Lance says with a light tone and squeezes his hand.

“I reserve the right to be skeptical….And inevitably save us when things go horribly wrong.” Keith had space nihilism to live up to.

Lance rolled his eyes, “Here I’ll just ask her.” He managed to rotate them almost all the way to the red building where she was waiting. “Hey, hi,” He addresses the girl, “do you think you could help us? We’re looking to get to our friends and out of certain death. Also, you’re not trying to eat us or anything, right?”

She blinked at the two of them, “eat you?” She laughs, “Of course! With pepper.” She shakes her head and Lance exchanges a look with him. “Get in here, I’ve been looking for you! And this is a dinner, we _serve_ food, not the other way around.” She was almost indignant about it and ushers them into the warm light.

Keith keeps his hand on his bayard but feels the tug of artificial gravity and perhaps air around them. They were in a diner. To be precise it reminded Keith of forgettable stops on a road trip through Texas, red plastic booths with a sparkly undertone, checkered tile floors and black and white photos on the walls.

“Is that a juke box?” Keith murmurs as he tries to take this all in. He pauses again when he spots a bug-eyed alien with something like butterfly wings on its back. It blinks back at him.

“Hey, dad,” the girl addressed the bug and grins, “I found some of ‘em!” She kissed its cheek and Keith steadies himself by sitting down in a booth.

“What are we doing?” He asks as Lance bounces down into the sit next to him.  
  
“I dunno, ordering burgers?” Lance seemed to look around for a menu.

“You’re just going to accept this.” He stared at a picture of what might be Marilyn Monroe.

“Weirder stuff has happened dude, let’s accept either space madness or a 1960s dinner in the middle of an asteroid belt.” Lance shrugged, “The universe is a big place.”  
  
Keith puts his head in his hands and opens his mouth to respond when the girl plops down across from them with a beeping device.

“I’m Ginger.” She announces with a grin to match a sun that might contain excited baby bunnies on it.

Lance sticks out his hand, “I’m Lance and this is my grumpy boyfriend, Keith,” he flushes at the use of the ‘B’ word, “We can spray him with a spray bottle if he tries to interrogate you.”

Keith growls at him at that and tries to elbow him in the gut, Lance just sort of laughs and pushes him away.

Ginger nods, pressing a handful of hair back to stare at them, “And you,” her eyes go wide, “You’re both from earth!”  
  
Lance and Keith’s eyes meet, “Yeah,” Lance smiles, “Man, that’s cool you’ve heard of it, most aliens assume we’re from the boonies or making stuff up.”  
  
She nods like a kid in a bouncy council, “I’m from earth!”

Keith examines her closely, “You’re human.”  
  
She throws her arms in the air, “Yeah! Oh gosh, I’ve been so excited to meet earthlings, I made this tracker for human DNA, it’s weak so I never thought it’d catch anything, but here y’all are!”

Keith hums and Lance beams back at her, “And we never thought we’d meet other people out here.” He chuckles, “Right out of the cold nebulous, taking us in.”  
  
She goes to stand up, “Yes! Where are my manners, let me get some tea and maybe a patty for you folks.”  
  
Keith sighs and watches the young girl leave, “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”  
  
Lance groans, “Babe. _Baaaaabe_.”

“I’m just saying, this could easily be the point at which, and I’m quoting you, they eat us.” He folds his arms across his chest.

Lance rolled his eyes, “Look at me, I’m taking off my helmet, trusting a weird restaurant at the end of the universe.” He removed his helmet and Keith narrowed his eyes.

Lance doesn’t choke and die so Keith takes off his helmet next. “I hate this.”  
  
Lance kissed him on the cheek, and Keith wrinkled his nose, “But _I’m_ here” Lance says with his hand squeezing his, “and you like me.”  
  
Keith went red from remembering when Lance said he loved (loved) him, he discreetly wipes at his face and looks away. “I’m getting cavities.”

Lance chuckled and Keith eyed the alien at the counter.

“Do you think that’s really her dad?”  
  
“I think we’re going to find out.” Lance drummed his fingers on the plastic surface of the table, “And I think,” he seemed to hold his breath. “I think this might be our lucky break. To get back.” It was an almost sentimental statement coming out of his mouth.

Keith pinched his cheek and pulled, “Let’s wait and see how their tea is.”  
  
“And what kind of poison they use?” Lance teases with his eyebrows up.

“Precisely.”

Ginger returned with her tray full and a skip to her step, “Forgive my manners, here’s some food, and this is the Red Rocket Diner’s in the Nefertiti asteroid belt.” She sings.

They take their tea and Keith sniffs at it, “Hey, that wouldn’t be close to these coordinates would it?” Lance takes out their numbers for the meeting spot and Ginger examines them.

She thoughtfully takes them in her hands and squints at the numbers and a map they had nicked from the cruise ship weeks ago, “Yes.” She nods resolutely, “That’s right around the corner.”

They both exhale like the world was lifted off their shoulders, “But,” Keith mulls this over, “Can you take us there?” He asks with apprehension.

Ginger plopped herself down in the booth across from them again, “Sure!” She bounces up and down, “I’ll take you anywhere you look. The catch is,” Keith holds his breath, “You have to tell me about earth.”

Lance grabs Keith’s hand excitedly under the table and even he cracks a smile that fills something shaking in his chest.

“We can do that!” Lance practically vibrates, “We can totally do that!”

They take a sip of their tea, it was surprisingly unpoisoned.

 

\----------------

 

Her name was Ginger.

She was part of a program of ‘Adopt Kids From Under Developed Planet’s’ her parents were fond of earth culture, hence the diner, but condemned its practices and questionable leadership choices. So they snuck a child off the planet to ‘save’ her.

That was Ginger, she was a waitress in the Asteroid Belt Diner and spent some of her adult life seeking to know more about where she came from.

Keith begrudgingly told her about deserts and sunrises and coyotes that sometimes stole your food you left out like tiny, sand-colored jackasses. Lance loudly said ‘my hermit boyfriend has no Disney princess in his bones, oh my god.’

“What’s that mean?” Keith glanced at him.

Lance shrugged, “Befriend the coyote. Perhaps sing to it.”

Keith rolled his eyes, “Anyway. It’s sandy and windy and has sharp plants, and you should not sing to the Goddamn coyotes.”  
  
Ginger nodded enthusiastically with her eyes shining.

“Lemme show you how talking about earth is done.” Lance cracked his knuckles, and then eventually started to tear up as he tried to describe the ocean, “It’s...big, with big stuff living in it, and blue.”  
  
Keith scoffed a brief laugh and Lance kicks him under the table, “They used to say mermaids lived in it, but they don’t and that’s a total bummer. But I got to meet some anyway! Lost my pants, long story.” He cleared his throat, “Anyway, there’s thing called a tide, and it goes like ‘swoosh,’ and ‘woosh’ and the water comes in.” That’s the part where Lance started to tear up and wipe at his eyes.

Keith’s expression softens, he tries to imagine what other people do in the face of emotions. He pats his shoulder stiffly as Lance recalls earth.

“Ooh! Swoosh, go on.” She put her chin in her hands, they try between them to describe ecosystems, animals, cities.

Lance begins to yawn and rub at his eyes when Ginger gets the hint.

She leaps to her feet, “I’m sure you've had a long ordeal,” she blinks, “Would you like to stay in the spare room in the back?”

Lance exhales and wearily gets up, “That’d be great actually.” Keith follows him out of the booth after downing the rest of his tea.

Ginger has a brief buzzing exchange with her adopted dad and then walks them to a side door leading to a cramped hall way. She shows them a dusty room with one bed.

“I hope y’all don’t mind one bed.” She says with a strained tone.

Lance shakes his head, “We wouldn’t have any other way.” He drags him into the room behind him.

“G’night!” They wave at her as she tells them to tell her more about baboons in the morning. And where they came from, and dust storms and cars.

They nod and Keith sighs, “this is something.”

“Home.” Lance says dreamily.

Keith stares up at the gray ceiling, “Home.” He begins to take his belt off and remove his space suit. Lance leans over and smirks at him while he takes his pants off to go to sleep.

“Ya’ jealous?”  
  
Keith pauses and glances up at him, “Of what?” He says blankly.

Lance huffs and crosses his arms, “Come on,” he opens his hands out wide, “Of meeee...With people.” It was almost a whine.

Keith snorts and sits down on the bed, “You like me don’t you? I'm not worried.” Keith tilted his head, “ _Should_ I be worried?”

“I mean, no, duh.” Lance pouts and sits down next to him.

Keith blinks at him and examines his face in the dark, “Do you want me to be jealous?”  
  
“A lil’,” He scratches his neck and Lance leans down towards him, “Don’t you want me all to yourself or something.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes and gives an affectionate peck to his lips, “I’ll punch her in the morning then. For your attention.”

"That's all I ask for." Lance said sarcastically as he leans towards him.

"Really?" Keith was almost ready.

“Babe, no. Ginger is like an oversized puppy that wants to know what cotton candy is. And I’m pretty sure she saved our asses from suffocation.”  
  
Keith ruffles his hair and Lance grabs at his wrists, “Duh.”

Lance pins his hands above his head and kisses him. “Here.” He whispers into his jawline, “I’ll pretend you were super jealous and need my body.”  
  
Keith was laughing and shaking under his weight. “Need your body, of course.”

Lance nuzzles him and whines a little, “Gotta be wanted, like the last piece of pizza at a hyena wedding.”  
  
“Fine.” Keith bites at his ear briefly, “I want you.”  
  
They kiss fervently on top of the strange comforter, his tongue in his mouth as his weight pinning him down. Lance talks about making love to him like the day was new and celebrate going home, but they fall asleep before anything else happens.

 

\------------------------

 

Keith was sleeping peacefully with Lance’s head tucked under his chin when he heard clattering down the hallway.

“Hey!” Ginger knocked on their door before barging in, “hey, have y’all been ridin’ around in a castle?” She asks breathlessly.

Keith clears the crust out of his eyes, “What?”

Ginger pants heavily in the doorway, “We’re approaching something.” She pushes her hair back in bunches, “It has human signals.”  
  
Keith bolts upright in bed, Lance practically falls all the way out of the bed after him.

“What the fuck.” Lance rubs at his head and glares at the ceiling, “Beauty. Sleep.”

Keith jumps to his feet and wishes he had slept fully clothed like he used to, he dashes out of the door in his boxers, urging Lance to follow.

“It’s here.” He practically whispers as his heart beats in his ear. They scramble to the front doorway.

“Holy-” Keith’s eyes go wide, and for a second his space nihilism was broken. The castle of lions stood erect bathed in the white light of a nearby star and Lance hugged him from the side like he wanted to squeeze the life out of him.

  
“There it is!” Lance whoops, dancing on his toes.  
  
“Yeah,” Keith breaths in reverence, “The castle.” He shakes and his eyes go wide in the light as the reality of it sank in. Home.


	26. Homeward Found

Lance wasn’t sure the Castle would open up for them. They were in a floating bright red diner in the middle of nowhere after all.

But the stark white light poured from a docking bay and the restaurant was allowed to approach slowly.

“This is it,” Keith muttered to him. Lance’s heart stuttered in his chest and it felt like the most unreal moment of his life. More unreal than the moment he broke his arm falling out of bed or ice cream that turned out to be custard, or finding out he was destined to be a magic-flying-cat driver.

A second thought flitted through his brain like an annoying buzzer: what was he going to tell them about Keith?

He shakes his head, trying to dislodge the stray thought like a tick, he could worry about this later. He needed to take this all in first.

He jumps up and down, “We did it!” He burst out and pumped his fist in the air. “Wooooo!” He shook Keith’s shoulder roughly, “Keith, Keith, through all the bullshit...nearly dying, oh my God!”

Keith’s face split into an easy smile, “We really did it.”  
  
He drew him into a sweet kiss and tasted like forever and meant that this, _this_ is what he had ached for before he even knew the world was round or space was infinite.

They parted and Lance giddly waited to fully dock with the bay, he danced on his toes and could feel his limbs tingling.

Ginger stared at them with the tip of anxiety on her lips.

“Ginger! Come on,” he grabs at her elbow, “You’ll like our friends, most of them are from earth too.”  
  
Her expression illuminates like an electric candle, “I’d like that,” She turns around, “I’d like that a lot. Let me go tell my parents, you catch up your friend in the door, I’ll be right back.”

“Friend..in the door?” Lance turned around slowly, feeling the unreality close in on him. Through the open diner door and right in the docking bay was something out of a dream. “Hunk!” He clapped his hands breathlessly.

Lance practically leapt out of his skin and barely waited for the airlock to be secured before he launched himself out into the metal landing and off into his friend.

“Hunk, Hunk, Hunk!” It was a chant of praise, and disbelief.

“Whoa,” Hunk coughed and he was swept off of his feet, Hunk was laughing, and Lance almost might be crying. Relief like a tidal wave settles into his bones.

“Hunk...” He examines mutely in a quiet daze.

The only thing different about him was light patches across his skin, and a bruised, gaunt imprints under his eyes. They were still sick.

Lance’s smile slips and he feels his stomach bottom out, they were off having space-love adventures and, Lance mouthed it. “You still have Fisks.”  
  
Hunk shook his head and looked him up and down, “And you don’t, what’s up with that?”   


Keith steps into the scene and takes out what was his medicine list Lance had managed to get before he came to the rescue Indiana Jones style.

“I have a solution for that.” He says grimly, but Hunk was crushing Keith to his chest in a hug.

“Thought you were dead, we thought you were all goners to the Gallra.”

Lance sheepishly looks over, “And you guys...no one, lost to it did they?”

Hunk grins and shakes his head, “We take turns in the healing pods while someone else stays up and does basic maintenance, then we get back in.”

“Wow, that sounds like it sucks.” Lance comments and Keith elbows him.

“Oh it super sucks,” Hunk hadn’t stopped smiling, “But now you’re back! And uh,” he glances down, “Have medicine? ‘Cause that would be a big help to, you know, everything in my life.”  


Keith nods, “The list of ingredients for it, yes.”  
  
Lance wipes at his dripping eyes and feels sense of peace, “Let’s go inside then.” He starts to puff his chest out and head towards the door, “Oh, and let Ginger in.”   
  
“Ginger?” Hunk asks.   
  
Lance winks, “You’ll see.”

They make their way out of the bay, being sure to leave the door open for Ginger.

“Hello door,” Lance kissed the sliding doors, “Hello castle walls,” he kisses the cold metal walls, “Hello beautiful, beautiful floors.” He gets down on his knees and kisses that too.

Keith nudges him with his foot, “You were sick for two months, don’t do this to me now.”  
  
Lance rolls his eyes and sits back up, “Hello, my beautiful,” He opens his mouth to say Keith and maybe kiss his legs ironically, instead, he pauses momentarily. He doesn’t know why.

Rather, he gets up quickly and throws himself in Hunks arms, “Beautiful Hunk.” He wound his long arms around his neck, “I’ve missed you.”  
  
Hunk hugged him back, “Me too.” Hunk was wiping at his face next, “Oh God, I’m gonna cry, right, I’m already crying.”   
  
They make their way to the central ‘living room’ with Lance hanging off Hunk’s neck, and he is deposited off into the couch.

Lance glances at Keith behind him who cocks his head to the side, Hunk murmurs about waking up the others and turns to the door, they wave at him as tells them he won’t be long. Lance can’t stop smiling.

He chuckles to himself, “Remember when he had a stupid kissing contest of a show of ‘manliness’ and I sat on you to tell jokes here?”  
  
Keith poked him the cheek fondly, “You did always need a captive audience to get anyone to listen to them.”   
  
Lance bit at his finger. “You blushed! You have to admit it.”

“I had a crush on you.” Keith mutters back, “What was I supposed to do?”  
  
Lance snorts, “You had a crush on me? Embarrassing.”   
  
“I’m in a relationship with you doofus!”

“Still.” Lance dips his head down and Keith looks like he wants to settle on his lap on the couch, and Lance thinks like he would like that too.

“You’re right,” Keith says as he jumps other the couch to the cushions, “It is pretty embarrassing to be in the ‘b’ word with _you_.”

Lance huffs indignantly, “beyonce with me?”

“Yes,” Keith leans back on him, and they both relax for a moment, reveling in their moment of winning. “Yes. Beyonce with you.”

They laugh and Lance puts his long arms around him to drag him further into his lap, he squirms but let’s himself be drawn in close.

“They’re alive?!” Lance and Keith both jump apart and let go of each other, nearly toppling off the couch as they get to their feet.

“Pidge?” Keith’s voice nearly breaks.

Pidge, Allura, Hunk, Shiro and Coran all walk through the door, looking worse for wear with spots on their skin. Nevertheless, Lance thinks he’s never seen so many smiling faces with shiny eyes since they brought his baby sister home from the hospital.

He leaps towards them, dragging Keith with him for arms and legs and heads bumping together as they crash into one other like a disorganized football huddle that wanted to turn into a dog pile.

They laugh and barely say anything as Lance sniffles and Allura kisses him on the cheek, and suddenly it’s not a huge deal. He spins Pidge around in circles, she says may puke if he keeps doing it, but she's laughing with her head tossed back.

Coran cries into his mustache and Lance thinks he may be crushed in the man’s arms.

He kisses Shiro on the cheek himself, who laughs and pats Lance’s head. Shiro and Keith hold a firm hug that looked like it might not end anytime soon.

They do end up in a dog pile on the ground and nothing could be better than that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my children are home! :')


	27. Good Company

Keith held his breath when he stood in front of Shiro, so much had happened: from a tornado of trouble to weirdest nights of his life, and here he was, finally, standing in front of their friends again. He held his breath.

Shiro put his hand on Keith’s shoulder, his eyes looked as soft as cookie dough, “It’s good to see you.”  
  
Keith smiled down at the ground, “Sorry, we weren’t.. here. Sooner.” He says halting as he kept cracking the joints in his fingers and glancing at Shiro’s light patches of sickness on his skin.

Shiro shakes his head and tries to clutch him into a hug, Keith folds into it reluctantly. “Don’t worry. This one doesn’t count.”

Keith chuckles and he nods, smiling into his shoulder with a type of heart problem in the back of his chest. They stay that for a very long moment.

“I’m gonna puke Lance!” Keith turns around after the soft minutes pass and finds Lance spinning around Pidge on her toes and laughing.

Keith snorts and wonders if he should intervene for Pidge’s health, he watches for a second before he feels someone try to get his attention.

Allura puts a hand on his shoulder and he turns to her.

“You have a cure?” She asks lowly as she glances at the Hunk coughing off to the side.

Keith balls up his fists and his nerves go hard, “Yes. It might take awhile...But, we’ll get Voltron back.”  
  
Allura seemed to relax her shoulders, “I won’t say we have that time with Zarkon’s expansion being constant, but...” She exhaled and her eyes shine with wetness, “I was starting think nothing would work.”

Keith nods and squeezes her wrist, they feel an understanding pass between them.

Lance interrupts the with throwing the group into a hug, piling on the floor. Keith claims to not be a fan of this, but feelings like taut string snaps inside him like stretched bubblegum. He promises himself he won’t cry this time.

He wipes at his eyes and the others talk animatedly.

“....And Allura taught us how to fly the Castle, sort of, more like autopilot, but it is pretty cool.” Hunk was explaining proudly and Shiro was encouraging Keith to cut his hair again.

"Are you sure you want it that long?" Shiro asked, "Rapunzel might get jealous." Keith protested that he felt like keeping it. He doesn't mention the reason, that a certain someone had played with it awhile ago and he could live with that. He's telling Shiro about getting red streaks through it (Shiro groans) when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

Keith protested that he felt like keeping it. He doesn't mention the reason, that a certain someone had played with it awhile ago and he could live with that. He's telling Shiro about getting red streaks through it (Shiro groans) when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

He turns to find Allura’s eyes wide and her mouth open, “Who’s that?”

Keith blinks and follows her gaze to the door, “Ah,” he says, “That’s Ginger.”

“Ginger!” Lance called with his arms open wide, “Come meet our friends.”  
  
Ginger stood at the door hesitantly, pulling at her dusty blonde hair as she seemed to consider the group of people before her. Then she smiles.

“Hi everyone.” She waves with a wide back and forth and Allura’s grip on Keith’s shoulder tightened, he flicks an annoyed look at her as she stares straight ahead.

“Everyone, this is our friend Ginger, she helped us get back to you! Man, we met so many people on our trip-thing, a bunch of them were assholes but still.” Lance babbled as he ushered the curious Ginger in.

“I’m Pidge.” The group introduce themselves, Allura in particular sweeps her long white hair over her shoulder and stands up straight to try and shake her hand. Keith glances at Shiro in that moment and Shiro just shrugs.

“Welcome aboard the Castle of Lions.” Allura explained as the watched the girls, Ginger’s mouth hangs open.

“A castle?”  
  
“I’m princess Allura.” Allura seemed to hold her head high and square her shoulders.

“A PRINCESS?” Ginger jumped up and down and shook Allura’s hand more furiously, Allura’s eyes empty out and Keith sees color rise in her neck. He snickers.

“So,” Keith watches Pidge sneak past the display, “How about that diary I sent you? Helpful, eh? Or uh, also, you didn’t read the whole thing right?”  
  
“Oh super helpful,” Lance slaps Pidge on the back as Keith and Hunk stand around and watch them, “Keith read it like 500 times though to decipher your milk drinking habits- which was a lot?” Lance said curiously and Pidge ran her fingers through her longer hair.

Hunk looked between them, “Also,” Keith examines her, “Try Old Spice, maybe?”  
  
Pidge groaned and Hunk lit up, “I know, right? It’s like five pages laundry days.”

Pidge almost kicked them as they teased her, Keith got out the diary he still carried around in his pocket. “I transcribed it though.”  
  
“You _what?_ ” Pidge was still staring at the ceiling like it had fangs on it.

“I wrote it down. There’s some notes of your trip you might like, some of them are robot, uh, schematics.” He’ll take to his grave the fact he might have bought robot porn.

Pidge lit up and seemed to forgive him for the many re-readings of her diary, “Schematics?” She rips the book from his hand and bounces on her toes before coughing.

“WAIT. You’re a princess with a huge robot saving the galaxy?!” Ginger was still on the other side of the room trying to make Allura self-implode. Coran stood behind the blonde and gave a thumbs up to the princess.

Shiro came back with snacks from the dining room (it was goo).

Lance taps Keith on the shoulder, and tugs on his sleeve, “Hey,” Lance gets his attention, “All those letters to Pidge, weren’t, like about us?”

  
Keith raised his eyebrows and leaned into his ear, “Yes. I wrote one of our teammates detailed accounts of our love life.”  
  
“What? Ah!” Lance puts his hands in his hair, Keith rolls his eyes.

“Kidding, it’s mostly about you being horribly sick and drooling on me in the night.” He deadpans and Lance exhales.

“Dude.” He says calmly now and Keith leans into him to smile.

“It’s alright.” Keith breaths and their foreheads almost touch, they breath in time.  
  
“It’s good to see you too getting along.” Shiro tries offer them some goo.

Lance and Keith exchange a look. Lance whispers under his breath, “Are we that obvious?” And then he puffs out his chest and walks forward, “Me and Keith are sort of an awesome team surprisingly.”

“Surprisingly?” Keith inputs.

Lance ignores him and rubbed at his nose, “Yeah. Pretty great. We could probably form a separate red-blue Voltron since our Lions would be in sync.” Lance flexes.

Hunk looks at them, “A voltron of an arm and a leg?... A leg-arm robot?”  
  
“It could kick people and then flip them off.” Pidge pipes up from behind the book. "That's it."

Lance puts his palms out, “No, it’d be a full robot, just like, smaller and stuff.”  
  
Keith tries to eat Coran’s food again, “I’d be the head.” He says blandly without looking up.

Lance seems to yell, “You would not!”

“Can I be the head?” Hunk asks as they settle down around the couches.  
  
“Yes, Hunk can be a head.” Lance says with a pat towards his buddy. They argue briefly about how to rearrange the robots so it’s a series of heads stalked on top of each other. It wasn’t very productive.

Ginger joins them, loves the goo, and tells them about staying for awhile if that’s alright, she had a lot of questions. Hunk tells her about the mountains and boats and caves, Pidge tells her about city lights and thick clouds and buzzing highways.

Keith can’t stop smiling to himself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're just tieing up some loose ends, and I couldn't help but throw in some gay allura too, it was too fun


	28. Doorway Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been thinking about this all weekend and decided I really didn't like the pacing of the last chapter, so I split it into two and added to this one. I dunno, I'll keep thinking about it and maybe rewrite the section if it comes to it, I really want some nice finale pieces!

During their meal, of course, someone starts hacking their lungs up. There was no avoiding it, Pidge was discretely suffering in the corner and Shiro looks light headed with an ashen pallor to his face. Coran has to tell them they need to get back to the pods.

Hunk hugs Lance and Keith again, this time with the full waterworks telling them he was so happy. Keith tries to take it all in. 

Allura meanwhile offers to show Ginger one of the rooms she could stay in for the time being and Ginger practically vibrates with excitement.

“Princess!" She exclaims, muttering under her breath, "A real princess, ohmygosh." And continuing, "You are too nice. I’ll have to do something to repay all of you.” Ginger beamed and grabbed at Allura’s shoulder, Allura gave a tipsy giggle and almost wobbled back and forth, they leave the room.

They watch their backs retreat and Hunk turns to the rest of the group “I don’t think Allura’s seen another girl before.”  Pidge seemed to be laughing behind her hand.

Pidge seemed to be laughing behind her hand.

  
“Well, she’s in for a trip then.” Lance says happily with his arms behind his head. "Maybe I'll give her some tips."

Keith shakes his head, "Remind me to stop you from ruining Allura's chances."

Lance stuck his tongue out and flipped him off, "Hey it worked on, uh, some people."  
  
Keith tilts his head and isn't sure what to make of that. "No mothman pickup lines."  
  
"Awe, come on."

Coran steps in and tries to usher them out of the room to get back to the sick bay. He reassures them any way that Allura is socially capable. Hopefully. And definitely met female Alteans before, at least 3. Lance wants to place bets on outcomes, but Shiro stops that as they reach the destination. 

"Okay, we're gonna get you guys some shots as soon as humanly possible, if not more...Like, we'll make it as soon as alienly possible." Lance tried to say as they climbed back into the pods and wave at their closing eyes.

Keith and Lance are alone together once more as the pods descend, they both seem to exhale and Lance takes his hand and squeezes it.

“Nice.” He says with a very Lance-like timber and Keith rubs at his eyes.

“I could use a nap.” He admits and tugs on his bangs.  
  
"Sure thing, baby." Keith snorts, Lance tugs them to their rooms, which took a little remembering to get back to. “This is like, ten times better than being shot at and catching alien diseases, 205% better, I’m not sure I’ve been this happy since we, uh, that one night.”  
  
Keith leans on his shoulder, “Good.”  
  
“And I think everyone’s grown? How trippy is that.” Lance babbles about the newness and Keith closes his eyes as they walk, something inside him is warm.

They get to Lance’s door and suddenly part, standing across from each other with a good foot between them, Lance scratches at back of his neck.

Keith takes a deep breath, “When are we going to tell them?”  
  
“Uh,” Lance seemed to sway from side to side and have his fingers tap his own thigh methodically. “I don’t know?” Keith raises an eyebrow.

“I expected you to say, ‘huge party with a rainbowp pattern inside and our faces on it,’ but if you want to...take it slow then,” Keith smiles, “it’s whatever you want.”  
  
Lance bit his lip, “I totally want a rainbow cake with a m&m center,”  
  
“Okay.” Keith says slowly.

“I’ll kiss the cake-Keith and everything.” Lance says with a strained smile.  
  
“I’ll practice being jealous this time, I promise.”

Lance chuckles, “God, you’re a good boyfriend.” Lance’s brow was furrowed and his smile was tight.

“But?” Keith tries to get it out of him as he crosses his arms across his chest.

Lance pursed his lips and doesn’t reply for a very long time, “You want to stay in your room or mine?”

Keith sighs, “What?”  
  
“I was thinking yours, but I didn’t want to be like, ‘whaddup I’m going to invite myself to your tiny bed already and snuggle to crap out of you.’ ‘Cause manners.”  
  
“Lance.”  
  
“I mean, we’ve totally shared tinier beds before, so I think it’d be weird otherwise if we suddenly went to other rooms.” Lance wasn’t looking at him.  
  
Keith hesitantly puts his hand out and grabs onto Lance’s wrist, “Is this a Lance thing?” He grumbles and tries to catch his eye.

Lance sighs, “Can I say something?"

"If it's not a pun." Keith crosses his arms across his chest.  
  
"That's 50% of my vocabulary."  
  
Keith glances up at him through his eyelashes, "What is it Lance?"

Lance sighs, "Pinky promise to forget what I'm about to say, but I'm just let's say, a little bit nervous about being upfront about us."  
  
"Is it being with guys thing or what?" Keith frowned.

Lance shook his head, "I just don’t want...anything to change between us. If they know.” He replies quietly in a sudden moment of vulnerability.

Keith was taken by Lance’s earnestness in his pursed lips. He tries to push up to kiss him and press soft touches to his cheek and mouth.

“Don’t worry.” Keith touches Lance's chest, "I've got you. And if we," he groans, "Talk about it, I hear that's good."  
  
"Grunts won't count than Keith." Lance teases.

He doesn't look up and traces a pattern in Lance's pectoral, "I'm serious."

Lance kisses him on the temple, "Okay, I feel a little better."  
  
It's hard for Keith to look up, but guides Lance into his room, entering the sliding doors and finding the cold, forgotten bed.

"How do you think they'll react?" Lance asks dreamily, "Do you think Hunk will cry? He'll cry. But Shiro, Pidge...Ugh." 

“We’re together in this. Family or whatever.” Keith blushes when he says it, family.

Lance brightens up as they fall into sheets. "Family, huh?"

"They won't be upset or whatever." He tries to reason with him.

“ _But_ , I would like to point out, if we're family I’m really not going for the brother angle here.” Lance says with a laugh and draws him into a hard kiss and Keith mumbles into his mouth.

“I already have a brother figure, don’t worry, you’ll have to pick another one.” Keith traces Lance’s mouth his finger and then his jawline.

“What role did you have in mind?” Lance asked quickly.

Keith shakes his head, “Don’t think I’m gonna say it.”

  
Lance gives him cheeky look and rolls him over in bed, “I’ll pry it out of it." He winks and Keith's heart jumps into his throat as he roughly pushed back on his shoulder.

"Shut up." Keith sputters, Lance tips his chin up and they share a breathless stare.

They come together, Lance bore down on him and Keith tries to think of ways to come out to the rest of the team.


	29. Out and Out

_Pidge_

Lance takes a deep breath and blows it out through his nose, “Guess who has two thumbs and has a lot in common with best bi?” He shouted at the mirror and pointed at himself, “This guy.”

He hears splashing from the bathtub and light laughter.

Lance ignored him smoothed his hair back in the bathroom mirror and tried again, “Think of Diana Ross, now stop thinking about her and start singing with me: ‘I’m coming out- and I want the world to know!”

He hears a chuckle from the bathtub, “Not bad...”  
  
Lance sighed, “Too punchy though? I could miss a note- embarrassing for everyone.”

Keith sat back in the ship bath as Lance finished exfoliating his skin and practicing in the mirror. Keith eyes him through the shower curtain, “I’ve never seen you nervous like this before.”  
  
“I’m the picture of calm.” He says back with a pout and Keith just raises an eyebrow up at him. He turns back to business. “Hey guys, if I was a hogwarts student I’d be sorted into hufflegay-for-Keith.”

Keith let out a series of laughs and moved the shower curtain aside to look at him, “Hufflegay?”  
  
Lance frowned, “You’re right, you’re right, that’d be just you.”  
  
“I’m Slytherin.”

Lance shakes his head, “I’m just glad your hermit ass knows what Harry Potter is, else we’d break up.” Lance makes a kissy face at him and Keith leans back in the tub.

“Alright, alright go on.” He says with a washcloth over his eyes.

“Guess who is currently digesting Keith’s sperm?” He asks the mirror cheekily and points at himself.

“Oh my God,” Keith sputters and uncovers his eyes, “I don’t want to ever hear that series of words again.”  
  
“Hey, you don’t get to complain like that after I give you morning head. Them’s the rules.” Lance wags a finger at him.

Keith gives him a lopsided grin, almost dark and Lance has to look away very quickly. “Fine, but if Shiro goes incredibly pale and faints like an old woman when you say that- that’s on you.”  
  
Lance chuckles, “I’m kidding, I would not say that. Now picture this, I’m standing in the foyer-”  
  
“We have a foyer?”  
  
“Shhhhh, I’m standing in the foyer, I’m hanging a picture, the picture is of myself,”

Keith nods, “Naturally.”

“It’s tilted, I turned to the crew and ask ‘Does this look straight to you?’ And they say no and I yell ‘exactly! Me, same’.”

Keith is laughing when the sound of banging on the door erupts and they both jump, a hand yanks at the sliding door and a messy brown head of hair pops through.

“Hey, we’re going to the final planet soon for supplies, you two need to get ready,” Pidge says and curiously looks between the two of them. “Are you….are you just, you know, hanging with Keith while he’s in the bath?”  
  
They look between each other and Lance sort of freezes while Keith responds blandly, “We became very close.”  
  
Pidge shrugs and gives a smile, “Wow, okay, that trip was good for some thin-”  
  
“PIDGE.” Lance unfreezes and yells very loudly, “I have something to say.”  
  
“Now?” Keith mouths at him but Lance ignores him, he had to get over this.

Pidge blinks, “Okay, shoot.”

“I...am a crooked picture frame.”

  
Pidge looks over her shoulder and then back towards Lance with a strange look on her face, “Okay?”

Lance begins to sweat and stand up completely rigid, “Pidge listen really carefully.”  
  
“Is this really the time?” Keith says from the tub as Pidge glances between them.

“Wait, I’m ready, I want to hear what it is.” She looked attentive in her large-sleep shirt, alien pants and slight frown.

“If I was a mix drink…” He holds his breath, “I’d be a Bi Tai.”

Pidge shakes her head, “Are you okay?”  
  
“A Long Island Bi Tea Pidge...A Sex on the Beach, with Keith.”  
  
“Why would you come out like that?!” Keith tries to splash him.

“I’m doing my best here,” He throws his arms in the air. “And she’s fifteen now.”

“Wait, is that what all the noises from your room was?” Pidge’s eyes went wide in realization. “Oh my God, you guys were playing dick whack-a-mole.”  
  
“We’re trying to tell the others very slowly.” Keith says reasonably as Lance put a hand on Pidges shoulder.

“Whack-a-mole? Pidge, have….you had The Talk? Because that is seriously not how sex works.” Lance tries to meet her eye and she was still making faces at them.

“Desserts for a month and I won’t tell-”

“No, we’re in love. Be nice.” Lance says fervently and Pidge shrugs simply.  
  
“You guys,” Pidge is interrupted in what might have been blackmail. Hunk walks into the room, “We’re docking with the planet right now, what are you doing?”

Lance put his fingers to his lips in Pidge’s direction and she nods ever so slightly.

Hunk looks between all of them, “Are you guys just hanging out in the bathroom while Keith takes a bath?”

“It’s what the cool kids are doing.” Lance assures him.

  
“Lance is a picture frame.” Pidge juts her thumb towards Lance.

“We should go.” Lance says with a sigh and they both leave the room with a confused looking Hunk behind them.

“Soooo,” Pidge glances up at him, “Bi-ami Vice?” Pidge offers and Lance cackles.

“That’s the spirit.”  
  
They still had a long way to go, but Lance figured they would inch their way there.

 

************

 

_Hunk_

They got the rest of the medication gathered together and Hunk was slowly building a better needle to inject the drug with.

Lance was watching him very, very carefully. His deft fingers work over the wires and the carrier bay is quiet except for their soft breathing. Lance  goes through all the lines he practiced in his head to get what he wants to say out there.

“Keith is gay.” Close enough.

Hunk pauses in what he’s doing and glances behind his shoulder, “Is, um,” Hunk looked confused, “Good?”  
  
Lance sighs and puts his chin on her arms, “What I’m trying to say is...I mean...Have you ever thought about love?”

“Yes.” Hunk nods very seriously. 

“Okay, now imagine love is like Hogwarts houses…”  
  
Hunk sits straight up and turns around directly towards him, Lance’s eyes go wide. “Lance, do you want to tell me something?”  
  
Lance gives a high-pitched nervous laugh and tries again, “You know when you go on a wild space adventure with someone where you catch a horrible zombie-virus and almost die a bunch?”

Hunk examines his own patchy skin, “I am familiar with said zombie virus, yes.”

“Well I caught, uh, more than that.” He huffs and scratches the back of his own neck.

Hunk pats him on the shoulder and beams, “I want to be the best man.”  
  
Lance blinks several times, “I’m not even done yet!”  
  
“Oh, you weren’t, sorry. Keep going.” Hunk gestures him on and all Lance could do is smile.

“I caught-”  
  
“Love?” Hunk says as he claps his hands together.

  
“Goddammit, you are too smart for secrets.” He says as he crosses his arms across his chest.

“Weeeeelll, I also read Keith’s journal entries and he’s pretty obvious about it and I can put two and two together.” Hunk wraps him in a huge hug. “This is so awesome.”  
  
Lance smiles into Hunk’s neck, “You’re really happy for me?”  
  
“Duh!” He huffs, “You’re like...the biggest romantic I know, ‘bout time it worked out.”  
  
Lance frowns, “I’m the biggest _stud_ you know I think you mean.”  
  
Hunk rolls his eyes and then kneels back on the ground to adjust the automatic injector. “How’s it feel?”  
  
Lance leans on the wall next to him and bonelessly slides down it, it’s quiet for a very long moment as Lance realizes he can finally be out with it. “I’m terrified.” He says softly and puts his head in his hands.

Hunk pats his knee, “That’s sweet.”  
  
“You don’t understand, my mouth goes dry, I have constant heart attacks if he looks at me, I keep thinking I’ll get over it, but I’m not over it!” He whimpers, “And he still somehow likes me back.” His face was too hot.

Hunk turns to him, his eyes were moist. “Come here.” He opens his arms out wide.

“No, wait, we already hugged it out.” Hunk wrapped him in another embrace and sniffled.

  
“I’m so happy for you bro.”  
  
Lance leans into the hug, “Okay, okay, I get it, Lance is a sap.”  
  
“I love you.”

“I love you!” Lance hollers and suddenly something clicks in his chest and he’s grinning from ear to ear, “Damn, these go better than I thought they would.”

Lance is very happy to hug him back.

************

_Coran_

Lance was helping Coran clean the medical pods again, it felt very nostalgic but he felt taller around them now. Bigger.

He’s quietly cleaning the glass up and down when Coran clears his throat at him.

“You’re very quiet.”  
  
Lance glances up and continues to scrub the window, he grins. “I’m just glad you guys are getting better.”  
  
Coran sniffs and stands up straight, “Not fast enough I’d have to say.”

“Hey, it took me _months_ to get better, you guys are like, the Usain Bolt’s of getting better.” He looks up toward the ceiling, “Then again, I did live in a five by five room and go out and stand in the rain for a couple hours during my illness...That might have done it.”  
  
Coran comes over and stands next to him, “You do seem better now my boy.”  
  
Lance nods and sticks his washcloth in warm water again and squeezes it, “You’ll feel it too and all the hacking will stop soon.”  
  
Coran raises an eyebrow, “Not exactly what I meant,” Coran sighs, “I was like you once, young, nervous, aflutter.”

“What?” Lance pauses and realizes he might be having That Conversation again.

Coran turns back around and continues cleaning, “Youth is a wonderful thing! Now, pods aren’t going to clean themselves you know.”  
  
Lance watches him carefully, examining the back of Coran’s head, “Coran."

"Yes?" He says with a hum.

"I’m dating Keith.”  
  
Coran turns around and smiles, “I know.”  
  
Lance sighs and rings out his washcloth, “Does everyone?”  
  
Coran laughs and walks over, “Tell them when you’re ready.” He slaps him on the back and Lance yelps. “This is a beautiful thing!”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Lance grumbles, “Have you ever wanted to spend all your time with someone forever? It’s awful.”

Coran grins widely. “A beautiful thing!” Coran starts wiping down the last pod, “You’ll have to try and rub off on Allura...I’m starting to worry about her.”  
  
Lance blinks, “I saw her fall down in the hall the other day when Ginger walked past.”  
  
Coran nods, “She’s a flukenar in romatron.”

Lance nods his head like he understood. “Oh yeah, I could show her some moves.” He winks and smooths down his eyebrows, Coran frowns.

“I’m going to advise against that, I have some high suspicions those may only work on Keith.”  
  
Lance’s mouth hung open, “I’m not sure if I should be offended by that or not.”  
  
“Don’t be. I saw our princess muttering to herself with a list called, ‘girls like…???’  
  
“That’s cute!” Lance grins.

Coran frowns, “Most of them read, ‘wild animals?’ and ‘muscle shirts?’” Coran sighs and strains his neck, “Her father certainly never taught her about this.”

Lance flexes, “I’ll talk to her.”  
  
Coran laughs, “You should just spend time with your other!” He puts him in a rough hug, “I’m proud of you.”

  
Lance’s chest inflates at that moment and it’s a pretty good day, he doesn’t have to hang up a crooked picture frame of himself or anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiro and Allura are next! And then probably a final chapter and an epilogue, woo


	30. A Storage Room

Keith was sitting on the couch in the living room area, the lights were dim as to simulate night time on this timeless ship.

A make-shift TV that Pidge and Hunk had jerry-rigged picked up distant signals, mostly static at that moment with a few odd sounds in between.

Shiro sat next to him, an easy expression on his face and they both stared forward at the screen as if there was something on TV, two of Allura’s mice tumble over each other on the table- playing.

Keith tensely tapped his fingers together and glanced at Shiro intermittently, the other man stared ahead with a slight smile.

Keith concentrates on the mice for a second, two of the smaller ones, chasing each other across the table and trying to catch the other. Keith takes a deep breath.

“I have something I want to tell you.” He finally says through rattling breaths.

Shiro raised an eyebrow and the easy smile was there, “Shoot.”  
  
Keith opened and closed his mouth like a fish, he looks down at his hands and nothing comes out.

A hand is placed on his shoulder, “Let me guess, you and Lance are together.”  
  
Keith snorts softly, “I’m pretty sure Lance hanging all over me during breakfast might have given that away.”

Shiro’s eyebrows raise, “You aren’t very subtle.”  
  
“He’s an idiot.” Keith says with a nod.

Shiro shakes his head, “You aren’t exactly that subtle either.”  
  
Keith frowned and glanced at the hand on his shoulder, “I’m _nothing_ but discreet thank you very much.”

“Sure,” Shiro snickers ever so slightly.

“...Until he’s completely ready.” Keith finishes and Shiro looks at him in quiet sympathy.

“Those looks you throw him aren’t exactly hiding any secrets, but...I understand.” Shiro is gentle in the way chalkboards are irritating.

Keith takes another deep breath in through his nose, “Yeah, I,” he purses his lips, “I might be in love. Dumb, stupid love, but it is probably real.”  
  
Shiro lights up and slaps him on the back, “God! Being sucked into space really did something good,” Shiro sat back, “To think...Two years ago you would have sucker-punched yourself for that.”

Keith gave a soft laugh, “Yeah…yeah.” Keith flexes his hands and hunches over, he furrows his brow and tries to stir up some courage. "Things have changed out here."

Shiro turned back towards him, his expression faltering, “What is it?”  
  
Keith looks around, glancing at Allura’s mice, “Could we go somewhere else?”

Shiro’s eyes were wide, “Of course.”

They get up with the static-TV still blinking and murmuring in the faux-night, Shiro follows him out of the room, they walk the halls in silence. Keith reaches a storage room at the back of the castle and lets them in, white sheets covered furniture like eery ghosts and dust tickles his nose, Keith closes the door behind them.

Light streamed in from under the door and it’s hard to see much, but it would have to do. Keith bends his head down, his lips clamped down and he feels unusually small.

Shiro waits patiently for him. “Keith whatever it is….It won’t change anything between us.”  
  
That’s something he apparently needed to hear, Keith slowly, slowly lifts his shirt up to show the strip of violent purple across his skin, “Shiro I’m,” He tries to summon the words like a kraken from the depths, “I’m….Gallra, part Gallra.”  
  
He grimaces and can’t look up, “Someone, we don’t know who- how could we?” He talks fast, almost gibberish, “Someone had Gallra blood, and, and I have it now.”

Keith closes his eyes and waits. The pause was frighteningly long and he finally has to look up at Shiro, he was pale, paler than usual. His foster-brother for a short amount of time was alien to him.

Keith steps backward, ready to dart out of the room, but Shiro steps forward and hesitantly hugs him. This wasn’t easy for him, Keith knew that. He hugs him back as hard as he can.

“I’m not them.” He says roughly, “I promise I’m not fucking them.”  
  
Shiro shakes his head, “You’re not, of course, I would never think that Keith.”

Keith shakes slightly and his gut is a stir-fry of emotions that keeps churning and churning, “I’m sorry.”  
  
Shiro sighs into his ear, “I don’t want to hear that.” Shiro pulls back and keeps his arms on his shoulders, “You're from earth, and even if you weren’t, you’re just Keith to me.”

Lance was a bad influence on Keith and his emotional state because he felt moisture pooling at the edges of his eyes, “Goddamnit.” He wipes at them briefly, “ _Goddamit._ ”

Shiro rubs soft circles into his back, “It’s okay.”  
  
Keith gives a shaky breath, “I wish it was different.”  
  
“I know,” Shiro shakes his head, “But I’m not going to see you any differently.”  
  
Keith chokes and grits his teeth, he wipes his eyes, “You’re...the worst.” He wasn’t exactly good at this.

Shiro makes an indignant noise, “The worst? _Lance_ stole my blankets this morning and tried to be a blanket monster.”

  
Keith opens his mouth, “So?”  
  
“I’m holding you responsible.”  
  
Keith’s eyes go wide, “You can’t hold me personally responsible for everything my boyfriend does.” Keith feels the tension floor out of his body as Shiro looked down in amusement.  
  
“Too late...He spilled milk on them.”  
  
Keith groans and threads his fingers through his hair, “I’ve honestly done enough laundry for a lifetime. But, I’ll do something...to him, _with_ him I mean, get them back.” He flushed and Shiro was laughing, his whole chest shaking.

  
“I think he’s building a pillow fort with them now.” Shiro says thoughtfully, “You know,” Shiro gives him a wicked smile in the dark, “He’ll probably make a great father.”  
  
Keith makes a noise that was almost a scream, his face heating up like a furnace. “You can’t say things like that.”

Shiro chuckles and opens up the door, light flooding into the cramped space, “The kids will run home and he’ll pretend to eat them up- remember? Dad used to do that.”  
  
Keith’s face was molten lava and couldn’t, _couldn’t_ think of things like that, “you’ll kill me.” He says mostly to himself and socks Shiro in the shoulder the next second, “Alright, come on _grandpa_ , we have to actually save the universe first.”

"Hey, I love you." Shiro says off-hand and Keith prays a thank you that Shiro might be one of the best people in the universe.

"Love...yeah, yeah. You." Keith was going to have to change his street address if these people kept making him admit feelings.

They walk down the hallway to go to training. Shiro teases him with suggestions of Lance holding Keith's kids and Keith threatens to kick his ass.

  
The rocks in Keith’s chest shift and Shiro assures him later, and all the time, things hadn't changed between them.


	31. It's Not Gay if it's in Space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hecked up and wrote it in the wrong person, but oh well

Keith got up slowly and stretched his arms, reaching toward the ceiling and making his back crack three times as he arched it.

He rubs at his eyes and attempts to swallow the sour taste of morning in his mouth when he feels an arm sling around his shoulder. Keith jumps and someone’s nose buries itself in his neck.

“You know what today is?” Lance asks sleepily into his skin.

Keith’s face heats up. He still hadn’t gotten use to this. He feels Lance’s naked chest push up against his back.

“What?” Keith asks dryly, distracted by his boyfriends arm around him this early in the morning.

“Guess.”  
  
Keith rolled his eyes, “Morning breath day. Gayer than usual day.” He pauses, “Batman day.” He frowns, “You like batman.”   
  
“None of those. But I am interested in gayer than usual day, do you put on spandex or just declare your undying love for me in general?”   
  
Keith sniffs, unamused, “I sleep in, wear comfortable clothes, and send the Westboro Baptist Church hate mail.”   
  
Lance laughs and Keith feels the laugh through his ribs. It’s not a bad moment. “That’s why I love you.” Lance kisses him on the cusp of his ear, “One.”

Keith’s face flushes and he shifts from side to side, he still isn’t used to the ‘L’ word. Lance hugged him from behind casually and settled his head in the crook of Keith’s neck. Lance’s bare hip pressing up against his side.

Keith glances down toward him where he was closing his eyes and leans serenely into him.

Lance turns to Keith’s neck and presses another kiss into it, “two.”  
  
Keith’s eyebrows raise, “I know this is romantic, but counting out of nowhere is a horror movie trope. I know. It’s the sort of thing I used to marathon with Shiro- and afterward, he hid in the basement and I stood at the door with a rake.”   
  
“That’s super cute,” Lance backs up and kisses one of the backbone's on Keith's spine, “Three.”   
  
“Oh my God.” Keith looks up at the ceiling.

“Relax, we’re not gonna die,” Lance chuckles, “Not after everything we’ve been through.”  
  
Keith blinks and then turns his head toward him, “then what is it?”

Lance’s shoulder’s rise slightly, his chin tucked lower for a moment, “Twenty-six months.”  
  
Keith furrows his brow, “Go on.”   
  
Lance lightly thwaps him on the shoulder, “It’s our twenty-six month anniversary!”

Keith eyebrows sky rocket, his mouth turns into an ‘O,’ “Were we really gone that long?”  
  
“Since we formed Voltron,” Lance gave a shy  smile, “And we met, like, officially.”   
  
Keith looks down, the cream sheets pooling in his lap and hot breath on his neck. He turns to Lance, letting his naked body rise and meet the cool air as the sheet fell off, he kneeled in front of him.

He darted forward and pecked Lance on the mouth, and then again and once more for luck. Lance let out something that may have been described as a giggle.

“Knock it off. Your breath actually smells bad.”  
  
Keith gives a slanted grin, “I have to catch up, don’t I?” He kisses his lashes, making the other boy squirm, “Four.”

Lance put his wide hands on Keith’s shoulders and pushed him backward, “Okay, but new rules, you only win if you kiss every part of the other person before nightfall. Or like, lights out I guess.”

Keith’s eyebrows rose as Lance eased him onto his back on the bed. “Sounds hard. Every part?”  
  
Lance bounced his eyebrows up and down and ran his hands down Keith’s narrow chest, resting lowly on his hips and then traced the v of his pelvis, “Every part.”

Lance kissed his upper torso and then his naval.

\-----------------

 By the time they were headed to breakfast Lance was at 9 and Keith was at 6. It wasn’t a fair fight so far.

Keith tried to chase him down the hallway, but Lance complained and called a timeout, threatening he’d make a ‘Lonelier than Usual Day’ if Keith didn’t stop interrupting his routine.

Keith ends up wandering into the kitchen by himself, humming with his hands in his pockets, he might have been smiling.

The doors slide open and he finds two other people left in the kitchen, Hunk finishing up his normal breakfast cooking and Allura listening to her mice chatter in the corner.

Keith languidly goes to the goo spigot and manages to get some on his plate without wrinkling his nose all the way.

“Morning,” Hunk called over as he raised his hand and Keith made his over to the kitchen islet to sit down. Hunk studied him for a moment, “Oh man, you look happy.” Continued to stir a bowl of something creamy and brown, something looking like actual food.

Keith spoons a mouthful of goo into his mouth anyway.

He takes a moment to respond, “Good day.” He says simply and Hunk watches him.

"Something good happen?"

Keith shrugs, "Yeah. Think so."  
  
“Niiiice,” Hunk bends over and talks lowly, “Did uh, you get like new gloves? Because already dibs on getting you new ones for your birthday.”

Keith furrows his brow, “No.”

“Did one of the lion’s have kittens?”  
  
“Did one of the lion’s have kittens?” He blinks.

Hunk shrugs deeply, “I’m keeping my options open here,” He looks off into the distance, “Also, how cute would that be? Metal robot weapon kittens? I bet they would mew.”  
  
Keith chuckles and stirred his goo, still not as bad as some of things he had on Zanzabar. “No, it’s not as good as one of the lion’s showing up with kittens.” Keith says absently, “It’s my anniversary.”   
  
“Congratz!” Hunk grins, once, twice, then he turns, “One moment.” He looks over to Allura, “Princess is the airlock working?”   
  
Allura blinks curiously and walks over, “What’s this?” She asks curiously as she looks between them, “Is this another garbage monster, because I thought we all agreed the last one was a fluke.”   
  
Keith snickers and Hunk shakes his head, “You know, no, but I was thinking….Airlock.” Hunk continued to look at her.

“It’s working.” She says slowly.

Hunk nods, “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Well now, let’s talk about Keith and Lance.”

Allura’s eyebrows rose, “Oh?”  
  
“It’s their anniversary.”   
  
Allura turned to Keith, “Oh.”   
  
Keith scowled and moodily had another bite, “What?”   
  
“Look, it’s cute. Very sweet. You both look happier.” Hunk said quickly, “But also, I think Shiro had a migraine after our last movie night.”   
  
Keith furrowed his brow, “what?”   
  
“Lance sat on your lap and whispered to you the whole time. You actually giggled and I never want to see that again, it was like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.” Hunk hunches over and whispers ominously, “Unnatural.”   
Keith sticks his bottom lip out, trying to think about how to respond to any of that.

Keith sticks his bottom lip out, trying to think about how to respond to any of that.

“Hunk,” He’s grateful when Allura intervenes, “I can’t put them in the airlock.”  
  
“Thank you,” Keith says with his hand out.

“I need them for the next mission.”  
  
They both pause, Hunk’s hand goes still as his spoon droops, “Mission?”   
  
Allura nods, “I think it’s time we do something productive again.”   
  
Hunk sighs and pushes his hair back, “Alright. Back to fighting alien monster creatures that keep almost killing me,” He heaves another dramatic sigh, “I guess.”   
  
Allura pouts for a moment and Keith watches her, “Should I get my knife?” He ventures, he taken to not carrying it around as much.

Hunk puts a finger in the air, “Also, I’d like a few adjustments to my lion. Like a backrest, and shock stabilizer,” Hunk frowns, “And less monsters. Maybe 0 monsters, that’s an acceptable number of monsters.”

Allura frowns as she stroked one of her mice absently, “No you too.” She says evenly, “It’s not actually long those lines. No knives, or backrests.”  
  
“Oh thank God,” Hunk goes back to stirring.

“Should I get my, uh, safety gear?” He tries again and attempts to remember Allura’s version of ‘productive.’ 

“No,” She smiles, “Maybe some good shoes though. Diplomacy.”  
  
Keith grimaces and hunches over his cereal, “Nevermind. I’ll definitely get my safety gear.”

Hunk grins widely beside him, “Wait, I can do that. In fact, that sounds like a great new, permanent, mission. Dinners and light conversation.” He says dreamily.  
  
Allura raised her chin carefully, “I haven’t even told you about the people yet.”   
  
Hunk shrugs, “I got an A in communications and conflict resolution. That teacher loved me, also, I stopped Pidge from hijacking someone’s computer to make their permanent browser pornhub.”

Keith lets out a surprised laugh, “Really? Nice. Where is Katie? She didn’t write about that in her journal.”   
  
Hunk wipes his hands, “She’s in the hub, but no. Bad. Not nice. She almost challenged a six foot tall guy to a playground brawl.”   
  
“Where was it?”   
  
“The Garrison, you know. Good times.”   
  
Keith looks him up and down, “Maybe I should have stuck around. High-fived her.”

 Hunk laughs, “Oh no no, two of you? I would have failed Conflict Resolution, or maybe just a C.”  
  
Allura frowns at both of them, “The Mamamoo are not a conflictual people.” She interjects, “They are a people of rituals and etiquette, they don’t believe in violence.”

 “How are they useful?” Keith grumbles back at her.

“They have an alliance with Zarkon, but were never conquered by him,” She furrows her brow, “They have some sort of bomb. I don’t what kind.”  
  
“What’s the plan?” Hunk asks as he tastes his breakfast pudding.

“Charm them,” Allura says with wink, “And convince them to break their alliance with Zarkon.”  
  
Keith sighs. “Sounds like a walk in the park.”   
  
“It won’t be,” Allura assures, “But I think we have a chance yet.”   
  
Hunk makes her try the sauce, “Sooooo, Lance flirting? Pidge explaining the finer details of a internal processing?”   
  
“Lance isn’t going to flirt with anyone.” Keith shoots back.

“Oh right,” Hunk turns to him, “I mean, Lance flirting with Keith until everyone wants to leave and the Mamamoo beg for our help to kick them out.”  
  
Keith nods, “Better.”   
  
Allura shakes her head and then raises her hand, “There’s only a few ways to impress them.”   
  
“Flowers?” Keith asks flatly, remembering their last alien encounter as the whole team.

“Dancing.” Allura proclaims with another wink and a grin, Keith groans to himself.

\---------------------

“Relax Keith.” Lance reaches out for his hand with a cheeky grin, “It’s not gay if it’s in space.”

Lance was trying to hold him around the waist and practice the fox trot, Lance apparently learned it vaguely from his favorite senior math teacher.

Keith snorts and he looks up to him, “What does that even mean?” Lance shrugs.

They had headed to the training room when Lance came around. Keith managed to kiss him between the shoulder blades and the back of his head before Lance jumped on the counter calling fowl.

He was now at 8.

The lights in the training room were low and the floor completely flat, almost glowing in the blue lights. Altean ballroom style apparently.

Allura had gathered Pidge in the room, but Shiro, Ginger, and Hunk (who wandered off) were still being corralled in. People were not as excited about dancing apparently.

Coran was trying to program the training robot to waltz with people instead of trying to stab them, so far, it’s ‘kill’ instincts had proved a little too enduring.

But Keith didn’t need a robot to dance with.

Lance squeezed his hand again and positioned their feet as he nudged Keith’s feet apart.

“Not gay in space,” Keith shakes his head, Lance watches his face. He begins to turn them around slowly.

“It means,” Lance answers, “when we adopt our 10 kids they’ll call me Big Mac Attack and you Tits Mcgee, Space Ranger. None of this ‘dad’ BS.”  
  
Keith blinks once, “Lance. First of all, that’s too many children.”   
  
Lance shrugs, “How about 6?”   
  
“Honestly, I’m barely sure what a child is.” Keith says flatly and Lance snickers.

“Twenty six?”  
  
“Colder.”

Lance bows his head and taps their foreheads together so that they are eye level, something earnest bubbling under the surface.  
  
“Two?” Lance says quietly with his head cocked to the side, “Two, and we name one after my abuelita.”   
  
Keith lets himself grows a tentative half-smile, “I could...consider that.” He says softly, shuffling his feet as Allura started flipping between songs in the background.   
  
Lance’s eyes light up, “Yeah.” Keith’s insides squirm, Lance leans forward and kisses his cheek, “Yeah.” His breath tickles his ear and the word sounds like a much different phrase.

Keith looks down at his feet, “We’re naming the other one after my sword.”  
  
Lance tosses his head back and laughs, “That is the Keithest Keith thing I’ve heard all day. Keithdom. I owe Pidge three dollars.”   
  
“What if I said it was the closest thing _I_ had to a grandma?” He defends, not without a hint of humor.

Lance’s nose wrinkles as he smiles, his blue eyes focusing, and Keith almost leans in to kiss the wrinkles from face. But he’s not that kind of boyfriend yet.

“Also. The emo-est thing. ‘My grandma is a sword’ quoth the sword boy.” Lance hums fondly, “Now I owe Pidge _ten_ dollars.”   
  
Keith shakes his head, “I hope she makes you pay her in cash.”   
  
Lance was smiling, his hair was still a little shaggy from the months abroad and Keith leans forward and unthinkingly pushes his bangs back. Lance grabs his hand in mid-motion, his features relaxing into something soft, hesitant.

“You know. You know, it’s not just your sword now, right?” Lance almost whispers and Keith’s heart skips a beat, Lance shifted from side to side. “We’re your family,” He ducks his head, “I’d like to be your family.”  
  
Keith’s mouth goes very dry and if time was the least bit considerate it would freeze at that very moment. Give him a second.

Lance holds his hand more firmly, “And not like. Your cousin.”

Keith tries to meet Lance’s eye, struggles, and then looks back down, his heart stutters in his chest, he lifts his head again and peers into his face. Lance bites on his bottom lip ever so slightly.

Keith takes a deep breath and reaches his arms up to place them on Lance’s shoulders, their faces inches apart. He lets the moment linger, thin and silver like a long violin note. He gradually leans forward and pulls Lance into a kiss, this one shakes his senses like a tambourine.

“I’d like that.” He whispers.

“Yeah?” Lance laughs and his face is almost entirely a smile, his arms wrap around Keith’s torso to drag him forward.  
  
“Yeah.”

Lance picks him up slightly around the waist, he slowly holds him tightly and spins playfully around in place. The world is compact and pretty for a moment, he know he should protest as his toes drag on the floor and Lance twirls them, but he figured he could let it slide for a little while.

“11.” Lance breathes when they part, his eyes half-lidded and barely open.

Keith opens his mouth to assert that those two kisses were _his_ when a voice interrupts.

“Booooo,” They hear Pidge call from across the room. “If the rest of us don’t have gfs, bfs, or dates you should not be mocking us like this.”

They don’t around turn right away. Lance instead ran the back of his hand gently against Keith’s cheek, Keith held his breath. He gives him a small private smile and they break apart. 

Lance throws his hands in the air, “That sounds like a you problem.”

Pidge made a lewd gesture and Lance stuck is tongue. That was his boyfriend.

“Well, it’s true, you’re not being very productive.” Allura says as she stood at the front of them with her hands on her hips, “We have to meet with the Mamamoo in 16 hours. They expect etiquette, formal dancing.”

“Pfft,” Lance blows his hair out of his eyes, “I’m nothing but etiquette princess.”  
  
Allura rolls her eyes and then turns to Keith, “Watch him.” She points at Lance.

Keith nods adamantly and Lance’s falls open slightly. He raises a finger, “I feel like my honor is being besmirched here. Besmirched!”  
  
Keith sighs and wraps a hand around Lance’s waist as they stood next to each other, “Extra carefully princess.”   
  
Allura gives a half smile and straightens her skirt, “Finally. Someone I can trust.”   
  
Keith’s gut twists into knots a little bit. She still didn’t know, he tugs the end of his shirt down.

They argue lightly a little more until the automatic doors swoop open.

Shiro enters the room, leading Hunk and Ginger along behind him as they talked animatedly about something.

“...Anyway, that’s how I saved the Balmarra and almost got a rock girlfriend, sort of?”  
  
Ginger laughs as they approach, “Okay. I’d like to see that.”   
  
“She’s really cute!”   
  
Ginger heaves a sigh, “It must be nice to have a girlfriend.” She looked out across the room.   
  
Allura almost trips over her own feet and Lance tries to slip her one of his ‘101 pickup lines.’ Allura shoos him and clears her throat. She cleans herself up to gather everyone around.

“We are doing dancing at the moment. The Mamamoo respect dancing, it’s a sign of good breeding and very choreographed.” She tries to demonstrate and Keith sort of sinks in and out of paying attention. It looked like a dry version of a funeral march.

It was also a couples dance. He was already a couple, and he doubted he’d be the defining diplomat here.

“Oh, can you show me that again princess?” Ginger steps forward after Allura does a back-side step, Pidge gives her a terribly knowing grin.

Allura freezes, “Uh.” She steps backward, Shiro shakes his head and pushes her forward again.

“We can show you!” Lance sticks his hand in the air, “Me and Keith are like the champs at endurance dancing. The gay duo of saving our own asses. You two could follow us.”  
  
“Yeah!” Ginger cheered and turned to Allura, “Though, as a princess, I’m sure you’ve mastered like, every dance.” She had the disposition of the sun and Allura was drowning it.

Coran gestures to them to begin as the music starts up.  
  
Keith reluctantly turned toward Lance, “Fine, we’re doing this.” He huffs, “But the last two kisses were mine. Eleven and nine.”   
  
Lance dips down and kisses his chin, “Twelve.”   
  
Keith makes a frustrated noise and he hears Allura cough lightly behind him. He almost felt bad, glancing over his shoulder to see her confusedly figuring out where to place her hands.

“Okay, we’re mastering the box step.” Lance announces as he starts wiggling, “And the next will be the tango. For the wedding.”  
  
Keith choked on his own spit, Coran pauses to look at them, “The wedding you say.” Coran pulls on his mustache, “Hunk was telling me about those.”   
  
“I want to cater.” Hunk says lightly as he looks up, “And be like half a best man. Maybe not the whole one.”

“I want an open bar.”  
  
“No Pidge.”   
  
“Wait, wait,” Keith puts his hands up.

Lance grabs him around the waist, “It’s all in the plan. After that, two kids named Sword and Abuelita.”  
  
“Please don’t.” Allura says weakly.

Ginger laughs, “A baby named grandma!” She tosses her head back, “I love it.”  
  
Allura’s eyes were wide, “Well, I mean, yes, a certain appeal to it.”   
  
Keith was distracted from their exchange as he felt Lance’s hot hand on his waist pulling him closer until the sides of their hips met, Keith still feels a shiver down his spine. Marriage. Kids.

He looks around the room at the various faces smiling and trying to come up with worse names than calling your newborn grandma.

“We have one odd family,” Keith murmurs as he looks at each one of them individually, flushing a healthy warmth for what felt like the first time in months.

Lance elbowed him, “So you will call us family now."

Keith slipped his hand into Lance’s and gives him a cheeky grin, “As long you're not my cousin.”  
  
Lance smiled and rubbed small circles onto the top of his hand with his thumb, “What do you want me to be then?” He asked coyly and Keith shook his head.

“You’ll just have to find out,” He got on his toes to kiss Lance’s sharp nose, the way he wanted to before. 

Lance leaned forward, “You’re out flirting me here Keith, I have a problem with this.”  
  
Keith shrugs, “I had some practice in the wooing of Lance Sanchez.”   
  
Lance gave a laugh like firecrackers and it was the best noise he ever heard. “Damn. Well, good. I’m like L'oreal as they say. Worth it.”   
  
Keith pecks him on the lips and murmurs something quiet and nondescript, “you have no idea…”   
  
Lance flushed red and tugged on his own shirt sleeves. Keith kisses his nervous little twitches.

Lance pulled him into his arms again, “Is marriage gay in space?” He asks cheerily.

“Of course. Straight marriage is banned in space.” Keith says solemnly and Lance grins widely.

“Straightphobia! Stra-obia” Lance calls out, “Somebody get Mr. T, we need justice to be served.”  
  
“Mr. T is gay Lance. They’re all gay.”   
  
“Damn. You’re right.”

Keith laughed and pushed Lance’s bangs back again, his features growing somber, “Don’t you think we’re young…” Keith brings his knuckles up to his lips and kisses two of them, softly rubbing his wrist. Lance’s face was making a goofy expression.  
  
“You mean to save the universe?” He flaps his hand limply, “Nah.”   
  
Keith closes his eyes and kisses the place just above his heart, chest warm against his lips, he sighs, “Twenty-six.”

“What?” Lance tilts his head and stands up straight, “Wait, wait, wait.

Keith plays with the end of one of Lance’s hairs, “Twenty six." 

“I was at 12 and you were at 10, but you just added like, what, 4?”

“Combine them loser.”

Lance does some math on his fingers, “And they say I'm the cheesy one!” He pushes on his shoulder and Keith just holds on tighter to him. "Combine them, goddammit."

“Love you.”  
  
“Ah!” Lance cries. “No sneak attacks.”   
  
He kisses the place above his heart again, “Too late.”   
  
“Sneaky bastard.”   
  
He shrugs, “Your bastard.”   
  
“Ugh,” Lance clutches at his chest, “God. I’m never going to get used to that.”   
“The B word?”

“The B word?”  
  
“The ‘Keith is mine and I’m never gonna let him go’ word.”   
  
“Oh my God,” Keith ducks his head, his insides feeling like heated jam, “You can’t just...I hate.” He just ends it there.   
  
“I know.” Lance takes his hand and makes him spin around, “But that is one of the very good things about you. Even after being the densest boy in space.”   
  
“You’re one to talk,” Keith sniffs, “Loud.” He counters, “And you have a 5 part moisturizing routine.”   
  
Lance winks, “Well you’re grumpy. And know exactly two jokes.”   
  
“You’re all bones, I swear my obituary will read ‘impaled by Lance’s elbows’.”   
  
“You have bad hair!” Lance proclaims and they hover closer.

 “Careless.” Keith tuts, Lance hovers closer. “I’ve never even seen you plan for the future.”

“I know what my future is.” He doesn’t blink, Keith looks down at his shoes.

“Oh no.” He mutters. "Awful."

“Lovely.”   
  
Keith sighs, “Beautiful.”   
  
Lance leans over and pulls him close, “I love you.”   
  
Keith just kisses him again. It felt like the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all folks!! :D
> 
> thanks for being patient with the last chapter, it just took awhile.
> 
> Anyway, I may do an epilogue or bonus sexy chapter in the future (of parts cut out) but until then, well, this is the end. Thank you for following the journey! Thank you for your kind comments! Thanks for everything!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the ride.


	32. Epilogue

It happened when he wasn’t expecting it, two months back from being stranded, one month back into fighting Zarkon, two days into a well-needed break.

Lance’s consciousness was hovering just above the surface, slowly bubbling up as his last dream faded away- something about tea, the color purple, and hacking his lungs up. He still dreamt about the sickness frequently, but he wasn’t going to admit that.

He felt a scratchy material pressed up against his right thigh.

Lance frowned into his closed eyes and tried to shift away from the rough feeling, he inches to the left but finds the end of the bed quickly.

Lance cracks open one eye and presses his nose down into a mess of black hair, “Keith, honey.” He mumbles sleepily into his scalp, the other boy's arms just tighten around his neck and presses his face more firmly into his chest.

Lance presses his nose into his hair, “sweetie, listen, you need to buy boxers that aren’t made of hobo rucksacks.”

Lance lightly pokes his side and waits for Keith to sluggishly start to move, Keith does eventually start to squirm and murmur something about being ‘too early in the morning to complain.’ Lance kisses his hair.

“Keith, my red-flavored slurpee at the 7-11, the strangely hairless light of my life. You need to stop using paper bags as underwear.” He weaves his fingers through Keith’s hair as he says it.

He feels a retribution of Keith pushing up against him, making the wool feeling scratch his thigh, Keith mumbles into Lance’s collarbone, “we can’t all wear silk boxer briefs.”

Lance snickered, “I’m sure after a few ‘Pretty Woman-esque’ montages I could get you into some.”

Keith props his chin up on his chest and looks up, he rubs one of his eyes and seems to settle into consciousness, “haven’t you heard?” Keith’s hand trails down, “I’m already in your pants.”  
  
Lance yelps as Keith squeezes ass and he flushes, “Keith,” he wiggles, “this is serious couples counseling I am holding, on skin sensitivity 2037, it’s no time to re-seduce me.”  
  
“Fine, fine fine,” Keith sighs, “I’ll just take them off, happy?” He reaches under the covers.

Lance swats his hand back and interlocks their fingers, “what did I _just_ say?”  
  
Keith chuckles and kisses him on the shoulder, “After saving the universe, re-seducing you every single day of my life is the galaxy’s magic destiny for me, honestly.”

Lance’s heart skips a beat, it still did that, all he can do is flush gently, “well, I mean,” Keith grins into his skin and Lance bites his lip, “you wanna prove that tough guy?” So he was a little cheesy.

Keith bounced his eyebrows up and down and Lance laughed, “don’t make me laugh! I can’t be mad and turned on and amused all at once.”  
  
“You haven’t even begun to feel the ‘turned on’ portion yet,” Keith was kissing his jawline with a lazy certainty. “And that sounds like a challenge.”

Lance covers his mouth as he almost giggles, Keith bites his ear and Lance kisses his cheek as his body flushes gently. “Always.” He finally murmurs.

Keith leans back a little and Lance reaches forward, he strokes the side of his cheek and cradles it, Keith takes a shuddering breath and then leans into it like a cat.

Lance drags him up into a kiss, a deep one that rumbled something in his chest that tore him up a little bit each time until the day he figured there would just be scraps of him left. And he loved it.

They kiss slowly for another minute, reveling in the taste and feel of each other in the early morning hours.

Keith eventually readjusts himself to be straddling Lance and can feel Keith tilting his head up to kiss him more deeply and slot their hips together.

Lance groans into the kiss as he feels the pressure hitting him at just the right angle, Keith rolls his hips and he whimpers.

Keith seemed ready to push him to the edge quickly, he reaches down and Lance tosses his head back, he also ends up accidentally jutting his elbow out past the edge of the bed.

“Ow, ow, ow!” Lance hit funny bone on the bed frame and feels an eruption of static and sting in his elbow, “oh fuck,” He hisses and reaches to hold the spot.

“You okay?” Keith sits back a little bit.

Lance tosses one hand up, “Your plan to kill me by sex is here, I knew it!"

Keith snorts and rubs his sides gently and Lance made faces at his funny bone.

“Here, here,” Keith drags them away from the edge of the bed, they had switched to sleeping in just one room, but somehow hadn’t been upgraded to something above a twin.

“Human bodies are trash Keith, they weren’t made for survival,” he holds his elbow up and grimaces as the pain stings down his forearm.

Keith chuckles and turns him over, pressing his lips to the jut of his elbow, “better?”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Lance huffs, “when I said you have magic lips, that’s not what I was referring to.”

Keith rolls his eyes and lies on top of him, “big baby.”  
  
Lance holds his elbow and looks down at him, “I think you mean babe, and _your_ babe.” He manages a small grin as the pain fades, “You're stuck with me.”  
  
Keith drags his hand down Lance’s side, “God I hope so.”  
  
Lance blinks and then strains to kiss him on top of the head, Keith buries his face in the crook of Lance’s neck and he hears it ever so gently, like a breeze rustling on a nearby hill.

“What was that?” Lance asked, genuinely curious as his funny bone slowly stopped aching.

Keith’s purple eyes dart up toward him, pupils enlarged, he sighs into his skin, “I love you.”

Lance’s eyebrows shoot up, his mouth falling open as his thoughts short-circuit, “I-I,” he gulps dryly, “I know.”

Keith wraps his arms around Lance’s neck, “I don’t think I’ve…” He takes a deep breath, “I love you.”  
  
“Sunshine,” He squirms, “you are making me blush,” Lance looks over to the other side of the room, his face heating up like a fireworks display.

Keith hugs him tighter, “I don’t...think I’ve been able to say it with words before.”  
  
Lance bites his lips, “You know I know.”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
“You’re gonna make me explode!” His heart was racing and Keith was watching him so intently it felt like reality itself would shrink and adjust to just be good, and Keith, and not-evil ever again.

Keith’s face broke into a smile, a huge smile, absolutely beaming and rolling over to drag Lance into his lap, “I think I might have some catching up to do actually.”  
  
“You’ll kill me...” He whimpers.

Keith sighs gently, “thanks for waiting.” He kisses his neck, “I love you.”  
  
“Ugh, Keiith.” He moans a little childishly but he couldn’t ignore the excitement in Keith’s voice. Like he was surprised at himself like drawing a picture for the first time or when Lance taught him how to ride a bike.

“Here,” Keith presses his chest to his back, “I’ll limit it.”  
  
“Thank you.” Lance says graciously.  
  
“Twenty-six times,” Lance opens his mouth hotly but Keith kisses him chastely on the lips, “just 26 times once a day for forever.”  
  
“Buddy! My blood pressure is a thing.”

“It’s a reasonable compromise,” Lance’s face was on fire, he gives a dramatic sigh as Keith pushed his head back to look at him. "Only fair actually."  
  
Lance shook his head, "if it's for you..." He kisses his nose and grins, "I'll _tolerate_ being loved and adored I guess." Keith pushes on his shoulder and then all the way back into bed.

"Tolerance for adoration, huh?" Keith's long hair almost tickled his neck, Lance ached in a new way now, "let's test that tolerance." He kisses him heatedly and Lance arches up into his solid body.

He let him say Those Words, The Ones, over and over again for the hour.

 

\-----------------

After a session of passionate love-making that may have lasted longer than was good for his back or vocal chords both of them emerged to the living world and breakfast.

Hunk wasn’t meeting either of their eyes, but Pidge was programming something in the corner nonplussed, Coran was trying to add protein to the morning goo to see if a human ‘milkshake’ was possible. Ginger was already at the breakfast table, talking animatedly while Allura was biting her lip and managed to hold her hand. That had luckily finally started a week ago.

Now they just had to get Matt to say something to Shiro (another long enterprise entirely after the rescue).

Lance himself was smiling when he walked in, he’s not sure if he’d stop smiling for awhile. He popped his collar up and spread his arms to the room, “Guess who Keith loves?” He says airily as he greets his friends.

Pidge doesn’t look up, “His knife.”

“Defying authority figures?" Hunk contributes.

“Bad fingerless gloves." Ginger said with a laugh.

Lance sticks his tongue out at them, “Guess who Keith is  _ in  _ love with?”

Keith was already in the kitchen but looked up to him, “are you seriously going to tease me for being in love with you? We’re together.”

Lance’s heart jumps in his chest at the words, “Still babe.” 

Keith walks over and leans his head on Lance’s shoulder, “And to answer, it’s you.” He blinks up at him, “I just said it 24 times, but I’m sure I can get it through to you.” 

“Wait, wait-”

“I love you.”

Lance jumps, “babe, we’re in public.”

“Yes, you  _ are  _ in public!” Pidge calls from across the room and Allura was giving them a dead-eyed look.

Keith shrugs, “I want them to know, and you.” He gives Lance the look that made his insides wiggle, “I love you.”

Lance heaves a sigh, “I am pretty lovable.” Keith elbows him and Lance’s walls come down, he wraps an arm around his waist.

“I love you too.” He kisses him and the world melts away while everyone else around them throws silverware in their general direction.

But it was nice to know, leaving home and being sucked into space to maybe-sometimes-almost die was at least one way to get a boyfriend.

And he wasn't letting go.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for reading :D
> 
> also, if any artists with commissions open have been following the story I am interested in paying someone for a title art or just general official art for the story! Commenting here or my tumblr is the best way to reach me, I'd love to hire someone for the finished product


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